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Author: Charlotte Hays

Failed Education Experiment: Nikole Hannah-Jones Still Doesn’t Get It. President Trump to Address UN. Preparing for Xi. GOP: Some Good Local News. Inside a Baby Citizenship Factory. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Yes, big doings at the UN today.

We’ll get to that. But the buzz-producing story this morning is the continued fallout from 1619 author Nikole Hannah-Jones’ agonizing Sunday New York Times article on educational choices she made for her daughter.

Headlined “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,” Ms. Hannah-Jones’ article today made the cover of the New York Post, quite an achievement. Emblazoned on the cover: “Husband of New York Times writer says she’s like MLK Jr. for ‘sacrificing’ their daughter to terrible New York school.”

Unlike her father, the couple’s daughter, Najya, is not so complimentary about the choice; she is depicted as being angry about the lack of opportunity in her chaotic and failing school

“Lessons from Nikole Hannah-Jones’ School Experiment” is the headline at The Free Press’ lead story. Subtitle: “The creator of the 1619 Project sent her young daughter to a struggling public school, convinced that upper-middle-class parents could lift it up. A decade later, the results are in.” While the results of the experiment were not so hot, Coleman Hughes suggests that it is unfair to pile on harsh criticism of Hannah-Jones:

At the time, Hannah-Jones’ rationale was that bad schools are caused by a lack of upper-middle-class parents. Those parents, she argued, have the resources and connections to lobby on behalf of the entire student body (including poorer students from dysfunctional families), raise additional funding, and generally improve the quality of the education for all. As an upper-middle-class parent herself, Hannah-Jones … felt she had an obligation to be part of the solution, which meant sending Najya to a bad school. On the progressive left, her experiment read as noble. To everyone else, it was madness.”

Okay. That was then. This is now. How well did Hannah-Jones learn from the experiment? Not so well, according to a New York Post editorial:

Time and again in her essay, she falls back on the beliefs she started with: The schools are under-resourced; “a system of inequality” that stems from “outside the school walls but is magnified within them” makes change near-impossible.

This is why Hannah-Jones’ “1619 Project” had so many gross factual errors: She’s blinded by ideology.

In the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section, Matthew Hennessey writes about “The Oblation of Nikole Hannah-Jones.” Rich Lowry addresses how Hannah-Jones’ “perverse priorities [led her to] put her cause before her child.” Well, at least the wicked 1619 Jamestowners never practiced child sacrifice.

President Trump addresses the United Nations today:

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters the president’s speech will focus on “how he has, and his administration have, confronted complex problems head-on around the world” when past administrations “kicked the can” down the road. Waltz said the president will talk about ensuring that Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon, and will give an update on progress on the Gaza peace plan implementation. 

But will we hear the speech? In response to the White House’s ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, five networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC) have suspended the press pool that ordinarily covers presidential events. More on the media boycott. Trump is also expected to speak about a much-needed UN overhaul.

We will also see (press pool willing?) a state visit by China’s President Xi, who will be afforded a state dinner. Semafor’s Andy Browne writes that the meeting between Trump and Xi “won’t break the US-China stalemate.” Trump and Xi will discuss AI. Walter Russell Mead explores what AI means for Xi:

The arrival of the internet led many in the West to predict the fall of Chinese communism as the torrents of free content on the global web undermined the party’s control of information and empowered individuals….. Thanks to the web, the Chinese government can use an unprecedented network of cameras, centralized information gathering and other forms of surveillance to build the most powerful form of social control the human race has ever seen. The government tracks your purchases, your movements and your online activity and has access to everything from your medical records to your credit information.

This is the template that Beijing’s planners bring to AI. The question is whether it can work….

While the U.S. should seek cooperation with China when it comes to reducing the dangers AI poses to both countries, we have no interest in helping the Communist Party harness the power of AI to cement its increasingly totalitarian hold on Chinese society.

American officials discussing AI with their counterparts should remember that the two governments want different things.

In “Who’s Stronger, Xi or Trump?” Bill McGurn addresses the fate of Jimmy Lai, the heroic Hong Kong newspaper owner who languishes in a Chinese prison. “What Does Trump Want from Xi?” an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, suggests that the president “Start with no more help for Iran to target and kill Americans.”

“Good News for the GOP: Some Politics Is Still Local,” by Matthew Continetti, who sees several hopes for the Republicans, despite national trends favoring Democrats:

Look at each state, however, and it’s a different picture. The list of competitive Senate seats is growing—and not entirely in the Democrats’ favor. The complex scene is a reminder that local problems and individual candidates can matter more than the national environment. The ghost of Tip O’Neill [who famously said that all politics is local] haunts the 2026 election.

Although the last GOP senator from Michigan was elected in 1994, former Rep. Mike Rogers is neck-and-neck with Abdul El-Sayed, the former public health official and pal of anti-American livestreamer Hasan Piker. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Mr. El-Sayed 2 points ahead of Mr. Rogers, well within the margin of error….

The Maine Senate contest was rocked by Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s sudden departure in July. His replacement, Troy Jackson, is Mr. Platner without the charm. Incumbent Susan Collins narrowly trails Mr. Jackson, but his lead is tiny and Ms. Collins has outperformed polling before.

The most unexpected polling comes from Minnesota, which hasn’t elected a GOP senator since 2002. Yet recent Senate polls show Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter, close behind Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan.

Meanwhile, Chadwick Moore introduces us to the “US Army vet running a California baby factory for Chinese nationals to have American kids“:

Wealthy Chinese couples are implanting their embryos into American women so their children can be born as US citizens, The Post has learned.

The service is provided by a surrogacy agency, Patriot Conceptions, which operates between China and the US and has been accused of hiding details of who the biological parents are from surrogates….

Patriot Conceptions is run by a high-energy US Army vet named Haotian Bai — who founded the international surrogacy agency and last year received a prestigious fellowship from a top Republican think tank, which describes him as a “pioneering entrepreneur in the third-party reproduction” sector.

Ms. Must tends to regard AI hysteria as—well—hysteria. But to be fair, I want to note that the estimable Alex Berenson has a piece at The Free Press headlined “I Didn’t Fall for Covid Fearmongering. But AI Terrifies Me.” Subtitle:

At first, I was skeptical that AI posed a grave danger to humanity. I now believe the White House, the U.S., and the world must move forcefully to reduce the risks of AI. Here’s what changed.

A Few for the Road. “The Lion, the Witch and the Gender-Swap“: Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming movie is a remake of C.S. Lewis’s classic “Narnia” stories for children. Spencer Klaven warns that the movie betrays the source by making the Christ figure a woman. … Gerard Bajer of the Wall Street Journal warns that he feels a bad case of TDS coming on. … After a pleasant chat with President Trump, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani renews his call for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in town for the U.S. meeting, to be arrested as a “war criminal.” Fortunately, he lacks the power to do this.

Ms. Must is off for a week in New Orleans. See you back here September 30th.

Greenland Deal. Media Outlets Banned from White House. Billionaires Touting Apocalypse: What Do They Really Want? ’60 Minutes’: Pat Clancy Held Callan’s Hand As He Died. 1619 Mom Sends Her Kid to Crummy School. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Wow!

President Trump scored a huge Greenland deal that nets pretty much everything he wanted. What’s more, he didn’t have to rename a single one of Greenland’s fabled icy mountains. So far.    

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“Trump Scores a Win in Greenland“) starts a few perfunctory harumphs over Trump’s antics, but doesn’t minimize what the Greenland deal, announced Friday, means for U.S. national security:  

More important, it resolves a security challenge that has bedeviled American presidents since the 1860s and, in the process, strengthens the U.S. and European position in the Arctic in the face of Russian and Chinese ambitions.

While additional details are needed, the outline of Friday’s deal among the U.S., Denmark and Greenland solves the most pertinent security issues…. Mr. Trump has improved on the work of presidents from Andrew Johnson to Harry S. Truman, who sought to improve the U.S. security position in the High North from the great-power adversaries of their eras.

The agreement opens the door to investments from U.S. companies and bans any military bases from non-NATO countries in Greenland. Barrons calls the deal a triple win:

A new Greenland security deal gives President Donald Trump a triple win: smoother relations with the European Union, stronger Arctic security, and potential access to massive mineral reserves. Actually, extracting those resources won’t be simple,

The situation in Iran is a bit more up in the air (literally?) with President Trump reportedly “considering ‘blowing up entire nation’ of Iran“:

The US president also suggested he could “let them rot economically”, as Tehran is squeezed by a naval blockade, or strike a peace deal.

Iran on Sunday said it was preparing for possible air strikes and threatened to retaliate. US embassies and the US state department issued security alerts this weekend amid fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis.

While Iran threatens to “expand the geography of the war,” a story in the Jerusalem Post quotes Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlevi, who has secret channels to people in Iran, telling a rally that Iran is seeing quiet but significant defections from its military and civilian establishment.

Meanwhile, shipments getting through Hormuz are at a six-month high, and the stock market responded positively early this morning.

President Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The three media outlets are suing to restore access. George Washington University law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley takes a dim view of the White House ban:

I have previously expressed my disappointment with the ban. While I have been one of the most vocal critics of biased coverage on these outlets, I view this as an ill-considered, damaging move. Putting aside the constitutional concerns, it is a policy that undermines core values and traditions related to the free press.

The revamped (by Bari Weiss) “60 Minutes” scored a big “get” last night with Ross Douthat’s sensitive interview of Patrick Clancy, whose ex-wife Lindsay Clancy trial for killing the couple’s three children ended in a hung jury. Clancy is now remarried, and he and his new wife are expecting a child. Eight-month-old Callan was found alive and lingered for four days before dying in his father’s arms. Lindsay Clancy never asked for forgiveness, but Patrick says he gave it to her. I wonder how you ask forgiveness for killing three small children—and how you give it.

“Beware of Billionaires Touting the Apocalypse” is the headline on a London Spectator story. Geoffrey Cain writes that the billionaires are modern Cassandras—with one lamentable twist:

The kingdom of artificial intelligence is now producing a stream of its own Cassandras. On September 8, a 27-year-old AI researcher named Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic – and explained why on X. The company and its rival OpenAI, where he had also worked, were “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” By breakfast, tens of millions of people had seen his post.

But in the Silicon Valley version of Troy, there’s a twist to the Cassandra story. Instead of ignoring the Cassandras, the elders hear them out, agree with every word, then… wheel the horse in through the gates, right on schedule.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, a tech billionaire not touting the apocalypse, argues that the ones who do are really trying to sidestep existing regulations. No fun at all, Mr. Huang further argues that there’s a “0% chance” AI will end the world by 2030. In “A Doomsday Scenario for American AI,” Tyler Cowen argues, “The U.S. is slouching toward heavy regulation while China is poised to rush ahead. Beijing will then dominate everything from global arms sales to healthcare.”

President Trump, who has so far been resistant to the tech Cassandras, announces the formation of an “AI Force,” modeled on the Space Force, for AI oversight. Axios uses the term, “AI Czar.”

Woke advertising has scored another boo boo. Wait until you get a load of the latest high end Converse sneakers ad:   

The ad, which has been removed from the Nike subsidiary’s social media pages, featured K-pop singer Karina of the girl group aespa promoting the Chuck 70 X and Run Star Crush sneakers. In the ad, Karina held a pair of black high-top shoes under a star-shaped spotlight while wearing a long white skirt.

Several social media users asserted that Karina resembled a KKK member, with the shoes resembling a lynching victim. Critics included Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., who released a statement on the ad on Friday.

“Nike and Converse, what the hell were you thinking?” Carter said. “Your campaign shows what looks like a hooded Klansman, framed by what appears to be the dangling feet of a lynching victim. There is nothing creative or artistic about it. It is racist, reckless and deeply offensive.”

After facing backlash, Converse eventually pulled the ad and released a statement apologizing for the campaign.

Nike already has paid a high price for pushing left-wing ads.

We had a lot of stories on the importance of recess way back when Christina Hoff Sommers had just popularized the term “war against boys.” Reducing or eliminating recess was part of the story. But boys and girls need to have recess.  City Journal reviews a new book entitled “Why Recess Matters“:

A new book shows how unsupervised play offers children something that increasingly expensive and competitive youth sports can’t provide: some time and space of their own.

Mommie Dearest. “Woke NYT, 1619 Project writer deliberately sent daughter to troubled schools as a ‘sacrifice’ — and it backfired spectacularly“:

The writer behind the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project deliberately sent her daughter to poor Big Apple schools as a “sacrifice” to try to boost the education system — and no one is angrier than the kid.

The teen is now “boiling” mad — badly behind her peers after finally being allowed to enroll in a more rigorous high school, her mother revealed in a bombshell bizarre essay.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, 50, enrolled her only child in two struggling Brooklyn public schools beginning in 2015 — as part of a battle to change what she characterized as systemic racism, despite having the “connections and time and status” to get the girl into the city’s best schools, she wrote in the Times Magazine on Sunday.

By her own account, Hannah-Jones’ daughter Najya knows she was cheated by her parents.

I don’t know if National Review editor Rich Lowry has kids. But if he does, they will be spared the ordeal of Najya. Lowry loves western civ. Don’t miss his column headline “Book of the year’: How a 12-pound tome can save Western civilization“:

At a time when Western civilization has been successfully “de-centered” in academia and Western civ classes relegated to the dustbin of history, the book is a counter-cultural act.

It’s devoted to the idea that learning about our own civilization should take priority over learning about others, and that we won’t realize why it’s so vital to defend our tradition without first understanding it. 

Big Decision on Iran Coming. Much to Dem Chagrin, Hasan Piker Loves to Talk. Byron York on Good Economic News (that You Might Not Have Heard about). Cleta Mitchel: Mother of SAVE. Amusing C of E Incident. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Busy foreign affairs schedule next week for President Trump. There is a meeting with China’s President Xi, who will be given a state dinner. The president says he is also facing a “big decision” regarding Iran:

“Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?” he told Axios. “It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

What will happen? “It’s within [Trump’s] power to take the fight to the Iranian regime,” Matthew Continetti writes at Free Expression (“How Trump Can Solve His Yemen Problem“):

It’s impossible to sustain support for a war when the public believes that its government isn’t dictating events but responding to them. …

By taking the offensive, President Trump can shift the focus of attention from America’s perceived vulnerabilities to Iran’s actual deterioration. The first step is to bring the Saudis, Israelis and Emiratis together to prevent the Houthis from consolidating their position. Then, lend rhetorical and material support to Iranians willing to fight their government. Send the Iranian leadership back to the bunkers by taking out communications networks, transportation hubs, state institutions and symbols of the regime. Direct military and intelligence officials to form a plan for Iran’s next popular uprising.

Hoo boy. Streamer and sometime surrogate for Michigan Senate hopeful, Abdul El-Sayed Hasan, Piker apparently has no plans to hide his light under a bushel until November 3. This is making Democrats nervous. New York Post columnist Isaac Schorr explains why:

With a little under seven weeks to go until the midterms, Democratic campaign surrogate and professional meathead Hasan Piker just committed a costly “Kinsley gaffe.”

That is, he told the truth about what he and the ascendant wing of his party believe.

During a disastrous sit-down with Axios’ Alex Thompson, the journalist reminded the meticulously manicured Twitch streamer that he had once deemed the United States “the top dog in terrorism” before asking: “Do you think America, then, is worse than al Qaeda?”

“Pound-for-pound, as far as the number of deaths, yes. We have caused tremendous terror all around the world,” replied Piker.

Piker’s “pound-for-pound” remark made the cover of the New York Post. “With Friends Like These” is the headline, presenting pals Piker and Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed as the friends. Here is the original Axios interview, and here is a follow-up Axios story that has Piker hoping to campaign for AOC in 2028 and Dems running for cover. It should be mentioned that Piker also said that the Middle East would be “more stable” if Iran had nuclear weapons.   

All eyes, meanwhile, are on the midterms. Democrats are wildly optimistic, but Hugh Hewitt suggests that they might come to regret several primary choices, including Abdul El-Sayed (who nevertheless wowed elected Democrats in Capitol Hill meetings this week) in Michigan, and James Talarico in Texas. Veteran political reporter Michael Barone writes that it looks as if both parties are trying to lose:

If Republicans’ weakness is the self-indulgence of a second-term president, Democrats’ weakness is their propensity to embrace the wildest and least popular impulses of their political left.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel writes that the GOP is missing an opportunity: they should take greater pains to declare Democrats “the shutdown party.” Byron York writes about Trump, good economic news, and the midterm election:

Did you know that just-released Census Bureau statistics show the poverty rate in the United States fell to a record low in 2025? That’s an extraordinary development, but it has so far not attracted a lot of media coverage or discussion.

What about a big White House event featuring President Donald Trump touting a welcome decline in poverty and an increase in income? There hasn’t been one. “I dunno, but if I were president and the poverty rate dropped to the LOWEST RATE ON RECORD, I might make a big deal out of it — a lot bigger deal than the Trump White House is making,” commentator Mickey Kaus, who has been covering poverty and social policy for decades, remarked on Wednesday.

One more note — the Census Bureau also announced that real median household income in 2025 was $87,460, an increase of $2,250 from the year before and “the highest on record dating back to 1967.” So Trump could brag about the highest income and the lowest poverty on record. …

Vice President JD Vance almost got there in a podcast interview this week in which he pointed out the administration’s accomplishments, argued that electing Democrats to control Congress would undo that progress, and asked voters for more time to work on the things that are not going well.

“We’ve had an amazing success with the border, with immigration,” Vance said on the All In podcast. “We’ve pursued H-1B reform that prioritizes American workers over foreign nationals. There’s a lot of good that’s been done, but there’s a lot of work left to do. Don’t give power to the people who caused the problems that we’re fixing. Give us another chance, or give us another couple of years, to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

It’s never a great idea for a second-term administration, even with the unusual circumstances of the Trump second term, to ask for “another chance” at election time. … There is still a high probability that voters won’t buy that one, either — a number of key indicators look terrible for Republicans — but it’s the best the Trump administration can do. And the new poverty and household income statistics help them make the case.

Because we can’t face the magnitude of the debt crisis, calls to address the coming Social Security shortfall are generally unheeded. But the Dems stole a march, and the Republicans preemptively surrender on Social Security reform, according to Joseph Sternberg in the Wall Street Journal.

Well, that’s a very good way of putting it. “The lobby at war with learning: teachers unions serve no one but themselves” is the argument in a nutshell for Joel Kotkin’s Unherd story on education unions:

A recent federal survey suggests the share of Americans at the lowest levels of literacy has now reached 28%, up from 19% a decade ago. With the support of the unions, many schools have abandoned phonics and tried-and-tested approaches for teaching literacy in favor of “whole -language” and other trendy theories; 60% of American fourth-graders are poor readers. As the usually true-blue Atlantic put it, “declining standards and low expectations are destroying American education.”

The biggest losers here tend to be minorities. Recent California testing results show that only a third of Latino students meet or exceed English-language standards, and fewer than one in four exceeds the standards for math. Nearly 70% of black students failed to meet state standards for English Language Arts in the 2021-2022 school year, while about 84% didn’t meet math standards. It can’t be the press of too many students that’s causing this decline; California is expected to lose 1 million more students in the next five years.

Don’t Miss. Cleta Mitchell is profiled at RCP as the “Mother of the SAVE” Act. You probably know Ms. Mitchell as a prominent conservative election law and campaign finance lawyer. Well-deserved praise.

“Why is the Church of England fawning over a hardline Muslim?” asks Brendan O’Neill on Spiked Online. The award, supposedly to commemorate religious reconciliation and 9/11, is named for Hubert Walter, a former holder of Mullaly’s job. Walter’s form of reconciliation, it might be observed, was to go on the Third Crusade with his pal, Richard the Lionheart.

PS. The award was withdrawn after the recipient’s praise of Osama Bin Laden came to light. Big oopsie.

Fed Hikes Interest Rate. Warsh Compared to Volcker. Will There Be a Minnesota Midterm Miracle? Rove: Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat. Risk-Averse Society. Macklemore. And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

After much perfervid speculation, they did it. In a unanimous vote, the Federal Reserve hiked the interest rate for the first time in three years. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, this action marks new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh as “an inflation hawk”:

Has Elizabeth Warren sent her apology yet? We mean the letter to Kevin Warsh saying she was wrong to say the new Federal Reserve Chairman wouldn’t be independent. After Wednesday’s decision by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to raise interest rates a quarter point, she isn’t the only one who should be offering mea culpas.

The herd of independent minds in the Fed press corps spent the summer hyping a supposed staring contest between Mr. Warsh and President Trump, with the Fed’s credibility as the stakes. Mr. Trump famously prefers lower rates, as does any elected politician if we’re honest. The FOMC’s decisions to stand pat at Mr. Warsh’s first two meetings as its leader became supposed evidence that Fed credibility was in doubt.

It was a silly argument, and it obscured much more consequential developments at the Fed. Mr. Warsh is the most hawkish chairman since Paul Volcker, with a long record in our pages and elsewhere of explaining his views. … No doubt Wall Street and the press will have trouble dropping their speculation about Mr. Warsh’s relationship with Mr. Trump. 

For the time being, President Trump, who mercilessly badgered former Fed Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, has contented himself with blaming a “hostile board” for the hikes. Larry Kudlow stressed that the hikes come amid signs of economic growth:

So let me repeat an old supply-side saw, growth is not inflationary. Especially this kind of business-led growth. Manufacturing profits are soaring. Of course, profits are the mothers’ milk of stocks and the lifeblood of the economy. And that can’t possibly be inflationary.

What does the interest rate hike mean for us? Among other things, it will affect car loans, credit cards, and mortgages.

Why did it take the strenuous efforts of Senator Chuck Grassley, 93, to finally pry open FBI files on the nearly successful assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pa.? Miranda Devine addresses the secrecy of the Biden FBI, highlighting the news that an anonymous donor paid for gunman Thomas Crooks’ suspiciously quick cremation.

Iran Update. “Iran’s Attempts to Get Around the Hormuz Blockade Are Hitting a Wall.” Seems that “while Saudi Arabia and others find workarounds, bottlenecks are threatening Iran’s economy.”

Polls. Despite their faults, we’re addicted. Doug Schoen and Carly Cooperman write that Dems have an edge for the midterms but shouldn’t uncork the champers yet. “Preference Cascade in Minnesota” is how Powerline describes a stunning new poll:

The race for governor shows the biggest shift. In a classic turnout suppression poll, last month KSTP showed now U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar ahead of state Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth 52-36. The latest numbers have Klobuchar ahead 47-40, a nine-point shift in just four weeks.

…

The race for the open U.S. Senate seat, sitting Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) and Michelle Tafoya (R) are tied 42-42, a five-point shift in favor of Tafoya.

“Too Good to Check: A Virtual Dead Heat in Minnesota?” is Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air take on the poll. Uh-oh: Karl Rove explains why he is voting for a Democrat in Texas in the midterms. Can you guess who? It’s NOT the guy whose prophetic Lesbian minister predicts he’ll abandon his recent rightward shift (and return to tasty tofu?) the second it’s safe. More on Mail-in Ballots: “Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s “hero” Supreme Court justice, isn’t closing the door on the United States Postal Service (USPS) enacting Trump’s ballot-mail rules in the future, although he agreed with the majority that implementing them ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is too soon.”

Closing the Door on Risk. “The Zero-Risk Society Has Arrived,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim:

America’s global economic dominance, achieved in the 1950s and enduring still, is largely thanks to the young country’s risk-welcoming ethos. The few provisions that shielded economic actors from ruin in the 19th century—bankruptcy protections, limited-liability laws—didn’t deter risk-taking but encouraged it.

Then came the New Deal’s dramatic expansion of the welfare state. …

And bear in mind, [author of a new study on risk Allison] Schrager says, the reason millennials carry that debt in the first place: because politicians starting in the ’80s presented college as a risk-free road to financial security. Federal and state governments made loans easy, borrowers felt less price sensitivity and colleges responded rationally by bumping up tuition. “When college is touted as a ticket to a certain lifestyle,” she writes, “it seems smart to agree to almost any price tag and any amount of debt.”

An idyllic English village, Piddington, has just taken the risk of voting to secede from the UK. It’s a symbolic vote, but it indicates that England’s middle classes are awakening to the “lunacy of illegal immigration”:

So long as our leaders believe that their obligations to men who have broken into the country trump the democratic wishes and safety of citizens, the asylum crisis will continue. But Piddington’s declaration of independence remains a stunning rebuke to a government whose latest genius solution is to spread the problem out a little more evenly.

The British people’s revolt against open-borders lunacy is growing. The aggy working classes led the way, and the irked middle classes might finally be catching up. The Waitrose mums. The Stone Island dads. The Pink Ladies in Epping. The Ladies of Piddington. If they ever got themselves together, they might just save Britain.

“Macklemore Is No Free-Speech Martyr” is the headline of Karol Markowicz’s excellent Free Expression piece on the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s unhinged rant that resulted in his being dropped from an Ed Sheeran tour. Since Karol does a great job of making the point, I’ll just quote her description of the original incident for those who missed it:

Wearing a keffiyeh, a scarf associated with the Palestinian cause, Macklemore chanted to free Palestine and thanked a bunch of anti-Israel groups before adding: “So I say free Palestine, I say free Lebanon, I say free Cuba, I say free Congo, free Sudan, I say free all people in America living in fear of this terrorist organization, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free.”

Macklemore made sure to note he had no problems with Jews as people. But Jews could be forgiven for doubting that. In 2014 Macklemore dressed up in a costume that seemed an obvious Jewish caricature, complete with a prosthetic nose. He explained his offense hadn’t been intentional. But no real apology was forthcoming.

Bethany Mandel also has a good piece (“Nobody Owes Macklemore a Stadium“) in the Examiner. Meanwhile, stadium owner Robert Kraft outwitted Macklemore.   

“Full Hearts, Closed Minds,” by Free Expression columnist Matthew Hennessey, also addresses the Macklemore fracas and the lack of political diversity among artists (and artistes). Hennessey has some interesting observations on the Kennedy Center and the response of the “artistic community” to Trump’s name on the building. The Kennedy Center could be “ripped down” imminently, President Trump says, because he refuses to rescue it financially unless he gets credit. It does seem rather a shame, despite the KC’s expensive tickets and ugly Edward Durrell Stone building.

What? What? What book did John Quincy Adams believe all Americans should read to be good citizens? What is the one thing you should never do when the scammers come for your money?

Super-Woke Globalists Proposed to Regulate AI. The Human Factor in AI Disasters. Who Will Stop the Houthis? Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts. Rate Hike? Why Dems Can’t Quit Piker. More 

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Who will save us?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has put together a handpicked super-woke group of globalists he thinks will save us from an AI apocalypse:

It’s a group of globalists who believe in open borders, genderless pronoun and promote “Effective Altruism,” that believe all the world’s problems can be solved with technology.

In a bombshell essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” Amodei argued that leading AI firms should commit to allowing “embedded third-party evaluators” from a nonprofit called Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, that would maintain “employee-like access” to oversee safety efforts and ensure advanced AI models don’t turn Terminator and wipe out humanity.

For those who find Mr. Amodei’s regulators dystopian, Nicholas Wade offers “How to Manage the AI Risk?” in City Journal: “The dangers aren’t just hypothetical—but safety measures shouldn’t be used to entrench today’s dominant firms,” Wade argues. “Humans Are to Blame for AI Failures,” MIT Dean Daniel Hottenlocher refreshingly asserts: “Hugging Face wouldn’t have happened if nobody had given the system the power to do what it did.”

“Do the AI Doomsayers Have a Hidden Agenda?” asks Louise Perry of the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section. Noting that predictions of catastrophe are often convenient cover for unpopular political projects, Perry suggests the Age of the Nerd is upon us:

Apocalyptic AI predictions cast the nerd as both the greatest threat to mankind and the savior who might offer us a route out of disaster, or even toward utopia. All of these visions rely on atheist assumptions that cast humans as simultaneously cosmically insignificant—and therefore easily snuffed out—but also the potential creators of Godlike technologies.

Forget nerds. Think of the brave new world of algorithmic politicians, Sean Davis of The Federalist, suggests on X:

The print era gave us leaders who wrote well. The radio era gave us leaders who sounded strong. The TV era gave us leaders who looked good. The Internet and social media era gave us leaders who went viral. The Algorithm era will give us something quite different: politicians who cater to the whims of the oligarchs who own the computing power and control the algorithm. This is why they freaked out when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X.

Back on Terra Firma. “Who Will Stop the Houthis?” asks an editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The Houthis are an Iranian proxy militia that is threatening to block Saudi oil exports and poses a threat to Israel and Egypt:

All of this argues for a regional military response to the Houthis, but who will lead it? Saudi Arabia spends $70 billion a year on defense and has a capable air force. But it can’t defeat the Houthis alone or merely from the air. Retaking the strategic islands and ports will require ground troops.

There are now risks all around, but the biggest is if the world concludes that Iran and the Houthis are defeating Mr. Trump, the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies. Someone needs to stop the Houthis.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats to stop President Trump: They voted to rein in the Iran war, but a presidential veto is almost certain.

Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts. “Please spare us the sanctimony over her latest risqué ad,” Jenny Holland of Spiked Online begs, referring to Ms. Sweeney’s ad for sports-betting site Novig, for which she wears only “strategically placed sports equipment and says the word ‘sports’ over and over again, to mesmerizing effect.” Holland writes:

I regret to inform you that I am once again writing about Sydney Sweeney’s boobs – but only because her body parts are all over the news again….

Now a host of female athletes has taken to social media to voice their outrage. ‘Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sports look like’, posted one sanctimonious British sprinter on Instagram. But Sweeney is not in women’s sport. She’s an actress advertising a betting company.

Besides, let’s not forget that, for many years now, female sports have been at the center of one of the most outrageous scandals in living memory: the often successful effort to allow men to compete as women, and against women, thus depriving women athletes of their deserved victories and their basic human dignity. My research has found that none of the sportswomen publicly condemning Sweeney has said a single solitary thing about that.

Caitlin Flanagan weighs in on the issue in “Sydney Sweeney’s Naked Truth” at The Free Press: “The backlash against the actress’s barely there betting ad is ferocious, bitter—and an admission of defeat,” argues Flanagan. USA TODAY’s Ingrid Jaques puts her finger on the real cause of all this breast beating: “Sydney Sweeney’s new ad for sports betting app Novig has sparked backlash from athletes and critics alike. But the real issue isn’t the ad – it’s that she’s a registered Republican.”

Not As Much Fun. Stubborn inflation is setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates. The Fed is meeting today, and the market is holding steady (so far today) as it waits for the Fed rate decision. The Fed is seen as likely to hike the rate. Will it be the end of a beautiful friendship?

I Can’t Quit You. Psychiatrist Jonathan Alpert writes at The Hill on “Why Democrats keep coming back to Hasan Piker“:

The obvious answer is his audience. Piker reaches huge numbers of young people who aren’t necessarily watching cable news, reading newspapers or paying much attention to what politicians say on Sunday morning shows. But I don’t think his appeal can be explained by audience size alone. When politicians go on his stream, they aren’t just trying to reach his viewers. They are trying to tap into the relationship he has with them.

As a psychotherapist, I find that relationship more interesting than Piker’s politics. Think about the world as many of his younger viewers experience it. Housing feels out of reach. Dating is miserable. Democracy always seems to be in danger. The climate is approaching catastrophe. Open your phone and there’s another crisis waiting for you.

For some viewers, the outrage becomes another reason to trust him.

This isn’t peculiar to the left. There are figures on the right whose followers respond much the same way. The difference for Democrats is that they want Piker’s audience. They know he can reach young voters they have trouble reaching themselves, which leaves them in the awkward position of criticizing him while still needing what he has built.

Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed was grilled in a solo “debate” last night the GOP’s Mike Rogers skipped it) on Piker, Israel, and campaign money. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that control of the Senate may depend on whether former Senator and current Sherrod Brown can win back working-class voters in Ohio.

“The SAT Didn’t Create the Education Gap” is the headline on Jason Riley’s column. Colleges and universities that eliminated the SAT are bringing it back. Notre Dame is the latest. Interesting tidbit:

Typically, professors teach to the middle of student comprehension, which makes it more likely that someone with an SAT score significantly below the school average will have difficulty keeping up. Success in college—earning good grades and graduating with a degree in your preferred major—is highly correlated with attending a school where your academic preparedness approximates your classmates’.

“U.S. Space Weapons Are a Force for Peace.” The new Secretary of the Air Force revealed that the U.S. has weapons in space, and a WSJ editorial explains why this is a good thing. But Is There Intelligent Life on Earth? Don’t miss out on out-of-control Rep. Maxine Waters’ “exchange” with Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.

Scheming Through the Apocalypse. Who Paid for Thomas Crooks’ Hasty Cremation? Houthis. Higher Education to Turn Patriotic. Catholics, Bishops, & Immigration. Kamala & Konniving. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Well, well—Doomsday is upon us. Yet again.  

Seemingly concerned with the future of humankind, AI executives are demanding to be regulated.  

There is a certain amount of skepticism about this projected AI Apocalypse, however. Matthew Hennessey of the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression writes (“Where’s My Pitchfork?“):

It pays to be cynical when a CEO in any industry begs to be regulated. When the three top CEOs in an industry all agree they need to be stopped from settling a frontier they charged into like wildcatters, check your wallet. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the oligopolist’s handbook.

In this case, there’s an urgent wrinkle. [Anthropic CEO Dario] Amodei and his peers want We the People to appreciate that if the AI industry isn’t regulated, a happy outcome can’t be guaranteed. Essentially, Washington must organize a global regulatory regime right now or prepare for the worst. Nice little democracy you have there….

Mr. Amodei writes that the monster he’s created could take over the entire internet and unleash swarms of military drones. The likely outcome, he says, is a world dominated by Chinese autocrats. That’s quite a position to put We the People in, wouldn’t you say?

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway also expressed cynicism during a conversation with Fox’s Shannon Bream:

It is an issue of our common Washington, D.C. People seek regulatory capture. You’ve made it to the top of the heap, and you want to keep everybody else out by regulating so the smaller companies cannot rise.

“Beware the AI bosses ‘please regulate us’ bait-and-switch,” an editorial at the New York Post urges:

Top AI companies are blatantly seeking special privileges under cover of warning against the AI-pocalypse.

That’s the best explanation for the sudden flurry of doom-mongering from CEOs like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker stakes out a different position. His column, headlined “AI Promises Boom, Doom and Both at Once,” suggests that the companies’ calls for regulation may be self-serving, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Former President Barack Obama emerged as a proponent of regulation. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is seen by Politico as facing a dilemma on AI regulation. President Trump “declared on the AI safety panic,” according to Axios. Fox’s Liz Peek writes that President Trump must take the alarms seriously. Hugh Hewitt is less urgent. “Spare us the AI apocalypse rhetoric. Let Congress decide what comes next,” Hewitt advises, observing that “Americans are not in the habit of agreeing with corporate titans who cry that ‘Something must be done!’”

And a word of caution before we start doing things. In “The Dangerous Ideology Behind the AI Warnings” at The Free Press, an AI insider adds his own warning:

A philosophy called effective altruism has shaped today’s AI safety movement. Its proponents claim to be protecting humanity’s future. Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says think twice before believing them.

It’s more than two years since the Butler, Pa., attempt on President Trump’s life, and we’re now getting new information on Thomas Crooks, the gunman. FBI documents describing the “emotionless” Crooks are featured in a New York Post story:

“When Thomas was born he did not scream and he was always quiet from that point on,” his father, Matthew, told feds in newly unearthed documents about the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

Another story in the New York Post notes that an “anonymous donor” paid for Crooks’ hasty cremation but does not name the donor:

Thomas’ cremation was first revealed by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who was infuriated and disturbed that the gunman’s body was turned over to the family less than two weeks after the assassination attempt. 

The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s sweeping mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections:

The ruling, a major defeat for President Donald Trump, leaves intact election procedures and prohibits changes that could have had significant impacts for millions of voters set to vote by mail in contests that will determine which party controls the House and Senate.

About one-third of voters used mail ballots in 2024.

In a brief order Monday evening, the majority did not explain its reasoning for leaving in place a lower court order blocking the administration’s plans. The majority wrote that the Trump administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to the lower court order.

The lefty media can’t get enough of those Houthis. The Guardian, for example, reports that the Iran-backed Houthis have seized “strategic” Red Sea islands and that this means there is an “impending oil crunch.” Zineb Riboua takes a somewhat different tack in “Houthi Defeat Is Closer Than We Think” at The Free Press. He argues:

The terrorist group has renewed attacks on Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces a broader regional war. But a weakened Iran could finally threaten their ability to keep fighting.

We’ve all been concerned about the anti-American indoctrination in our colleges and universities. Unlikely as it may seem, this problem may solve itself. Walter Russell Mead tells us how, in a column headlined “Higher Ed Will Soon Get Patriotic.” Renewed great-power rivalry will suppress employer demand for “citizens of the world,” Mead argues:

Smart corporate recruiters will be seeking graduates who don’t want to abolish capitalism, globalize the intifada or destroy the U.S. Given the rise of antibusiness sentiment among DSA Democrats and MAGA Republicans, firms will increasingly see the value of being perceived by the public as loyal, productive members of Team America.

Despite the sometimes robust evidence to the contrary, college students and universities aren’t unintelligent. When top tech companies, law firms and investment banks wanted global citizens, the elite educational complex churned them out. Now colleges are beginning to respond to changing signals from these employers….

Second, as more elite private colleges and universities like Harvard, Yale and Vanderbilt promote greater intellectual diversity and more high-profile public universities establish institutes to study and teach the values of the American founding, more moderate and conservative young people will enter the academy and play a larger role in campus life.

“This issue is splitting the Catholic Church” is a Washington Post headline. The issue is immigration, and the Post publishes a piece by Nathan Pinkoski:

Catholic leaders speak with one voice on the issue of immigration. In July, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, marked his home country’s 250th anniversary by calling on the United States to welcome migrants with “compassion and generosity.”…

But when it comes to Catholics in the pews, the picture looks very different….Lay Catholic support for a border wall is sharply at odds with the official views of the hierarchy. Under the mantra of “building bridges and not walls,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opposed border wall construction in 2017, in 2019 and again in 2023.

But the Catholic hierarchy’s pro-migrant sentiments aren’t the product of these material incentives (the USCCB loses money on migration). Instead, they’re embedded in the way churchmen think and write about the public role of the Catholic Church. Bishops remain captivated by a postwar vision of migration that political leaders across the ideological spectrum are moving away from.

Moralistic discussions of migration are ill-suited to a time when migration is largely about economic aspirations rather than escaping totalitarian regimes. The inadequacy of the present system has impelled anti-populist politicians such as Donald Tusk and Keir Starmer to tighten asylum and immigration law. Yet church officials have taken a position that is squarely to their left.

Former Democratic insider Lindy Li is spilling the beans on her former party:

Li, a former Democratic fundraiser who switched party affiliation over unheeded warning signs about President Joe Biden‘s decline in the 2024 election, believes Kamala Harris was setting herself up to poach Biden’s donors just days before he dropped out of the race — while still telling voters he could win.

“It was all charade….”

Here’s what I find so telling: A woman who cannot put together a coherent, diagrammable sentence is nevertheless able to connive herself into first place on the Democratic ticket. Guess it just depends on what’s important to you.

“Meet the Influencers Boosting Zohran Mamdani’s Administration“: “Some in the mayor’s coterie are relatively innocuous. But others celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk, claim America runs “mass concentration camps,” and make apologies for terrorist attacks targeting synagogues.