Author: Charlotte Hays

Is Michigan turning out to be just about the most fascinating place on the political map of the United States right now, or what?

First there’s Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin. Possibly inadvertently, Senator Slotkin gave us a chilling preview of coming attractions. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal is headlined “Slotkin Promises Endless Lawfare”:

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin presents herself as a moderate Democrat, but there’s nothing moderate about her warning to students last week not to work for the Trump Administration. Do so at your peril, she said, because you might end up in legal trouble.

“I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun, I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,” she said at a University of Chicago forum last week. “I want that deterrence message.”

Deterring public service: Now there’s an inspiring message to a young person about American self-government.

 … But Ms. Slotkin is going further, essentially promising a scorched-earth lawfare campaign that goes after all and sundry, including what she calls “people who enabled” Mr. Trump. Apparently, she means even 20-something minions who might think a job in politics or government is worth trying.

This is where the multiple prosecutions that Democrats unleashed against Mr. Trump in the Biden years are taking us.

A Washington Examiner headline bestows the moniker “Slick Abdul” on Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed for his fancy footwork when asked whether he or his family has ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, spawner of Hamas. Byron York writes in the Examiner about Slick Abdul’s viral encounter with a young man named Tommy Teapell who asked him about the alleged ties. It was “a reasonable question” but …

At that point the exchange had reached a place where el Sayed might have said something clear — something like, “OK, I disavow the Muslim Brotherhood” — or moved on to play games. He moved on to play games. “Have you disavowed them?” he asked Teepell. “I haven’t heard you disavow them yet.” …

The crowd began to make noise. Abdul was putting this Islamophobe in his place! … El Sayed then went on to deliver a sermon about John F. Kennedy’s statements on Catholicism during the 1960 presidential campaign — as if there were any equivalence between the Catholic Church and a U.S. government-designated terrorist organization.

… Instead [of simply answering the question] el Sayed took another step forward in his campaign to portray valid questions about his background and his associations as Islamophobia.

Teapell, it was discovered, is a former staffer for GOP Senator Josh Hawley, which—pace the MSM—has absolutely no bearing on why the question is valid.  The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn writes about El-Sayed’s “rough homestretch.” Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama, who is to campaign in Michigan for El-Sayed, raised eyebrows by attacking the probe of Rep. Ilhan Omar (“Obama’s Disrespect for the Law“) and was criticized by Elisha Weisel (whose father was Elie Weisel) for “distortions” of Jewish history (“Obama’s Dangerous Mideast Words“). Omar Plot Thickens? Rep. Omar’s sister spoke recently and voluntarily with federal investigators. Powerline’s Michigan-based Omar watcher Scott Johnson has interesting observations on the alleged meaning of DNA evidence in the Omar case.

It’s the globalism, Stupid. “Why Democrats Won’t Stop Inflation” is the headline of a story by Justin H. Vassello at Unherd:

If a blue wave does sweep the nation, the Left will get to enjoy a bit of inflation schadenfreude…. Yet a rude awakening awaits those who imagine that ending the Iran war or booting the GOP from power will end the inflation crisis. For much of this decade, inflation has been a problem for consumers and firms, and a salient political issue for voters. And although policy choices like the Iran war have no doubt played a role, today’s structural inflation has a much deeper cause: it is the unintended price of voters’ choice to end the model of neoliberal globalization that defined the post-Cold War period.

Meanwhile, John Funds asks in National Review that, as in 1992, when Bill Clinton beat George H. W. Bush, “Once Again, Are We Being Sold a Distorted Economic View Just Before an Election?” Unherd’s juicy newsletter Undercurrents (sorry, I can’t link) reports on political strange bedfellows, including Judge Napolitano, who probably would vote for El-Sayed if he lived in Michigan. Victor Davis Hanson characterizes “The Deep Midterms” as “a fundamental choice over America’s economic future, national identity, immigration, energy, and Western civilization.”

The riots in France reportedly cooled last night after the imposition of targeted curfews. Walter Russell Mead writes of the riots as one example of a “generation conflagration” that is affecting other countries:

The French generational gap is different. As in growing numbers of countries today, France’s population is aging and projected to shrink, delaying the inevitable generational transfer of power. French boomers cling to the keys to the treasury, and it shows. …

The French generational gap is about more than age. Ethnically and culturally, French young people are more likely to have Islamic or immigrant backgrounds than older people. In 2024 the median age for French residents was 41.6 years. The median age for second-generation immigrants (with one or more immigrant parents) was estimated at around 25.

This mix of economic grievances that tend to unite young people in France and ethnic and religious tensions and alienation that affect some young people more than others helps explain the complex nature of France’s youth rebellion. Some protesters want to lobby city hall. Some want to burn it to the ground. Some don’t care much about city hall but enjoy looting stores and rioting in the streets.

This is bad news, but France’s problems aren’t only generational. Where young and old agree in France, they are generally both wrong. The best way to open opportunities for youth would be to slash taxes and dismantle restrictions on new housing, infrastructure, business, employment and almost everything else strangling the French economy with red tape.

Some of the Mead column bolsters President Trump’s contention that immigration is the main issue, as does Free Expression’s Matthew Hennessey, who writes that the “mobs burning Paris are an alliance of unemployed Muslim youth and unemployable communists.” Comme d’habitude, the Babylon Bee has the last word.

More International News. The White House reportedly has blocked the transfer of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, and President Trump is admonishing Ukraine’s President Zelensky to “remember our Oval Office fallout.” President Trump tells President Zelensky to “step aside” and make place for another negotiator. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin suggests a summit with Trump and China’s dictator Xi on the Iran conflict, which even the friendly New York Post compares to the disaster of Yalta. “Treason, no; moral obtuseness, yes,” assesses George Weigel.

A Democratic Convert to School Choice. Florida Representative and graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Jared Moskowitz is in favor of the federal tax-credit scholarship program that will help Jewish parents protect their children from antisemitism:

Security funding isn’t enough. Not every school is equally prepared to ensure safety amid rising antisemitism. When parents feel their child’s school is unsafe, they need to be able to find a different one where their child can learn without fear. Private Jewish day schools provide that environment, but financial circumstances prevent many families from enrolling their children in them.

I have always supported strong public schools, and I still do. But supporting public education and enhancing parents’ ability to seek a safe school for their child aren’t mutually exclusive.

America should be able to make every mother and father a simple promise: When you drop your kids off at school, you get to pick them up—no matter where you live, where your family prays or how much money you have. I urge blue-state leaders to opt in to the federal tax-credit scholarship program.

Mamdani Faces New October Revolution.

The Comrades are rebelling and causing headaches for New York’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani:

A sickle to the back!

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s allies are publicly breaking with him over his handpicked police commissioner — and Hizzoner is livid that the socialist House candidate he went out on a limb to endorse is leading the charge.

City Hall staffers have been openly whining about alleged ally Darializa Avila Chevalier — whom Mamdani endorsed just a few months ago during the primaries — after she led a crusade to slam NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch after ICE agents shot an illegal migrant in the Bronx.

The ICE shooting that triggered anguish from Chevalier and others involved illegal criminal alien Oscar Belgal, who is now inexplicably a hero. City Journal calls the incident the “latest excuse to condemn the police”:

The denunciations of ICE are especially odd in light of Belgal’s stateside criminal history. That includes a prior arrest for dealing hard drugs and a prior robbery arrest that ended in a plea. The New York Post also reported that a resident of a building Belgal lived in said that the Dominican national terrorized his neighbors with a machete—the weapon of choice for members of the Trinitarios street gang, to which federal authorities say Belgal has ties.

Why have so many rallied around a figure as unsympathetic as Belgal?  There are only two plausible answers, and neither reflects well on the city’s progressives. Either they want a criminal like Belgal—who not only broke our immigration laws but also then led a life of crime upon arriving in the United States—to remain on the streets of their cities. Or they seized on the shooting because they thought it could help amplify their message in the lead-up to the midterm elections, while giving local radicals something else with which to try tarring NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Speaking of an October revolution, Republicans might be longing for one that will set them on the path to preserving their slim majorities in the House and Senate. Henry Olsen of the Washington Post writes that President Trump’s rally schedule is more revealing than any poll:

A successful Wall Streeter once told me that the most important resource executives have is their time. That’s true for politicians, too, and it’s especially true for the president of the United States. The fact that President Donald Trump is spending most of his campaign time in places usually thought to be safely Republican is an indication of the massive challenges his party faces in the midterms.

“A Week in the Life of a Struggling Party” is the headline on Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal politics column. Before you get mad at Rove, both parties are struggling, but in different ways. “Little said last week will help GOP candidates,” Rove writes. “The bulk of White House messaging last week had nothing to do with swaying undecided voters.”

On the other hand, Rove writes that the Dems have no agenda and are counting on trashing President Trump to carry them over the finish line. It might very well work, but “victory without an agenda carries a cost,” adds Rove, who sees the Dems as directionless if they win.

“It’s not the next two years both parties should be worried about,” Ramesh Ponnuru argues in the Washington Post:

Voters’ choices now, however, could greatly affect the first presidential term after Trump leaves office….

If the Democrats win in 2028 — especially after a strong showing this year — it will be an altogether different scenario. They will have the opportunity to enact a transformational agenda. If they have both chambers of Congress and the White House, moreover, they will be tempted to cast off all restraints and entrench their preferences.

Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York writes that inflation is better than it was under Biden but still troubling for GOP prospects. We tend to think of falling crime statistics as a given nowadays. Independent Women President Carrie Lukas warns us that crime may not be foremost in our minds during the election season—but maybe it should:

The exodus of about 2 million people from our country — some deported, more self-deporting, according to the Department of Homeland Security — and the plummeting of crime rates are not a coincidence. Although the majority of those who entered our country illegally likely came in pursuit of a better life, the minority of criminals who took advantage of our open border caused tremendous damage.

Americans breathed a sigh of relief when this crisis subsided, and they now enjoy the return of normalcy. Yet this present state of relative stability and community safety must not be taken for granted. It was the result of policy choices, not happenstance, and policy choices can be reversed by new leadership.

The most fascinating race in the nation is the Michigan Senate race—Abdul El-Sayed, running as a Democrat, and Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed’s campaign has been beset in recent days by alarmingly plausible reports of family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Josh Hammer goes even farther:

El-Sayed is lying.

He’s running as the most thinly veiled Trojan horse in American political history — on behalf of the Brotherhood and the Islamism it embodies.

Hugh Hewitt describes El-Sayed “at best! — an Islamist apologist” and is much more certain than Ms. Must that he will not win.

El-Sayed isn’t the only artful dodger on the left. “Politicians Play Orwell’s Word Games” is the headline to James B. Meig’s alarming (I seem to be working that word hard today) piece in Free Expression:

Orwellian doublespeak is making a comeback, particularly on the left. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani sets a high bar here. With a genial grin he speaks of “dignity,” “affordability” and “abundance.” These are vague, positive words that few could argue with. His administration’s more divisive goals remain pleasingly blurred. Some of the mayor’s allies on the Democratic Party’s ascendant far left employ similar strategies. U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed promotes “All-American values.” But he mostly dodges questions about his ties to anti-American influencer Hasan Piker and has dissembled about his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Orwell noted that words like “democracy,” “freedom” and “justice,” while broadly seen as positive, are also dangerously indistinct. “Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way,” he wrote….

“Starlink Suspicions and a Frantic Warning: Inside Trump’s Turn on Zelensky.” This is the WSJ subhead: “Limitations on Ukraine’s access to military-grade Starlink terminals sparked panic among its officials and several U.S. lawmakers.” Confusing, to say the least.

Did you think “debanking” was an urban myth propagated by disgruntled conservatives? It wasn’t. “How Debanking Took Hold Inside the Biggest Banks,” by Rupa Subramanya in The Free Press, reveals “that ‘reputation risk’ was used as a guise by employees to banish some customers seen as too conservative or controversial.”

More Trouble for New White House Press Secretary. Katie Zacharia refers to herself as a lawyer but has never passed the bar exam. Oops.

Is This What Normal People Do? Irish novelist Sally Rooney’s books will no longer be available in the U.K. It is a decision by Faber, Rooney’s publisher, which would not be allowed to pass on Rooney’s earnings because of her support for Palestine Action, which was proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK in July 2025.

Describing Rooney as a “virulent critic of Israel,” Eli Lake of The Free Press rejects the notion that Rooney is a free-speech hero or victim of censorship. Poppy Sowerby of Unherd amusingly describes the withdrawal of Rooney’s oeuvre from an adoring public as “a tragedy for literary sadgirls.” I cannot thank Ms. Sowerby enough for supplying a literary deficiency with a description of Ms. Rooney’s work, which I seem somehow to have overlooked:

For the uninitiated, Rooney is the famed author of Normal People — the mopey tome that made a virtue of spectacularly bald prose and catapulted Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal to fame with a blockbuster BBC adaptation. She has also written, among others, Conversations with Friends and Intermezzo; the latter came out in 2024 to generally favorable reviews (with the exception of my own).

Rooney has been an outspoken supporter of the pro-Palestine movement since the horrors of October 7 — horrors to which Palestine Action’s co-founder Richard Barnard referred as the “al-Aqsa flood”, borrowing Hamas’s term. In July last year, Parliament voted to proscribe the group under terrorism legislation after its members broke into RAF Brize Norton and spray-painted two refueling planes red to symbolize Gazan blood.

I feel more erudite already.

A callout to Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has added another stellar first to her distinctive roster of achievements—first woman ever to attempt to revise her birthdate upwards.

“U.S. probe of Rep. Ilhan Omar focuses on birth date, citizenship papers, people familiar say” is the Washington Post headline. Only if the future Minnesota Congresswoman was a minor at the time her father became a naturalized citizen in the U.S. could she piggyback on his application for citizenship. The WaPo reports:

The federal investigation that prompted the search of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence on Monday centers on claims that she or her late father may have lied on decades-old immigration paperwork to secure legal status and eventually U.S. citizenship, three people familiar with the matter said.

Omar — a Minnesota Democrat who was born in Somalia and fled civil war there with her family before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1995 — has repeatedly rejected such allegations, which have circulated in conservative media for years. She dismissed them again in a statement Monday as “baseless lies and smear campaigns.”

The New York Post reports that Rep. Omar’s staff got her birthdate changed officially after she was elected to Congress. Omar’s age at the time of immigration is not the only question that revolves around her father. “Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has always made one wonder how a person could flee oppression in Somalia, find freedom in the U.S., and somehow end up viewing America as the villain in global affairs. Could it be that in Somalia her father was among those doing the oppressing?” asks James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal.

If Omar’s father, Nur Omar Mohamed, misrepresented his history, that could affect Omar’s claim of U.S. citizenship, too. There appear to be missing immigration records. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is investigating Omar’s finances, including curious, multimillion-dollar surges in her businesses tied to her husband. Rep. Omar is fundraising off the crisis. I guess it’s refreshing to be talking about Omar’s father rather than her brother?

The New York Post cover announces: “The Bruce Is Loose!” The Bruce is GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who is challenging incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul. They debated last night. Michael Goodwin writes that Blakeman outclassed Hochul on the debate stage—paving the way for him to win on Election Day. Blakeman attacked Hochul for her response to the Cornell rape accusations and her remarks on black kids and computers. A body language expert’s verdict: Hochul “looked like a deer in the headlights.”

Hochul wasn’t the only deer in the headlights yesterday. New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was nervous at her first briefing, and the Wall Street Journal described the rollout as rocky. But my gosh, the pile-on was vicious. The MSM has got it in for her. President Trump personally helped Zacharia prepare for the briefing—which possibly explains why Zacharia laid it on extra thick about being pleased to work for the president, and also perhaps why the MSM is so astonishingly hostile to Zacharia.

“Inside Kimberly Guilfoyle’s Final Days as Ambassador to Greece.” Kimberly Guilfoyle is NOT a deer in the headlights. To save her job, the Wall Street Journal reports—in a gossipy, front-page feature—that Guilfoyle claimed incriminating texts are AI-generated.

President Trump held a rally in Alaska yesterday, where he pardoned on stage Alaskan truckers targeted by the Biden administration for trying to fix truck engines. Trump is working hard to get people to the polls, but USA TODAY opinion contributor Merrill Matthews writes soberingly that it’s beginning to look a lot like 2006:

A Republican president is facing his second midterm elections. His popularity is in the tank, in part because he took the country into a costly, unpopular war he thought would end quickly. Inflation is too high and federal spending under his party has exploded. The economy, while reasonably strong, faces headwinds. His party could be headed for a major defeat in November.

“The Wealth Tax Stakes in California.” If Prop. 40 passes, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues, it will be part of the 2028 Democratic campaign. The editors write:

Targeted individuals would have to pay tax on nearly all their assets worldwide, including artwork, trusts, yachts, business interests and even a dependent’s assets. A Rembrandt in a Miami penthouse would be taxable in California.

The tax would also apply to a taxpayer’s share of voting control in private companies. So if a startup founder owns 10% of shares that carry 50% of voting rights, he’d have to pay tax as if he owned 50% of shares. This is intended to punish entrepreneurs who exercise control over companies.

Yet they could still be soaked if the state Franchise Tax Board determines based on “all the facts and circumstances” that “a substantial purpose” of their move was to avoid the tax. The wealth tax’s supporters say it won’t spur billionaires to leave, but then why write in this “general anti-avoidance” rule?…

Oh, and don’t believe the claim that this is a one-time tax to deal with federal Medicaid cuts. Federal Medicaid payments to California have increased 14% ($16.4 billion) over the last year and exceed the entire general fund budgets of all 49 other states. The wealth-tax revenue would be baked into California’s Medicaid budget, much of which will go to fraudsters.

Speaking of fraud … “Deep blue Minnesota is fed up with fraud — and may derail Dems’ midterm dreams” is a New York Post headline. Isaac Schorr writes:  

A state that hasn’t delivered its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 is bucking the prevailing national political winds and contemplating a change after years of progressive mismanagement.

Yes, Minnesota may have some regrets.

Does Israel, also in the midst of elections, have regrets about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Yonah Jeremy Bob, writing at The Free Press, suggests that the “Netanyahu era could end this month with a victory by Gadi Eisenkot, the plainspoken former IDF chief who wants to disempower the populist right.” TFP Editors ask how Israel—and history—will judge Netanyahu. Haviv Rettig Gur, Michael Oren, Yossi Klein Halevi, and others weigh in on Netanyahu’s legacy.

Meanwhile, in the same esteemed publication, Douglas Murray weighs in on the “sham” International Criminal Court (which the U.S. has just sanctioned):

Recent years have seen a flourishing of BS institutions. There is the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization that suddenly leaped to prominence last year when it was reactivated in order to accuse Israel of “genocide” in Gaza; there is the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a politicized pseudo-court that seems determined to fast-track that same genocide allegation; there is the United Nations Human Rights Council, whose only standing agenda item devoted to a single country is, yes, about the Jewish state; and the list goes on.

But the institution that must win any and all awards for not being what it says on the tin is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Founded in 2002, the ICC has served as a political tool for a quarter century. In the 2000s, European signatories routinely criticized the George W. Bush administration for not signing up the U.S. to be a member of the new institution. But the Bush administration took the view that all Democrat and Republican administrations have taken before and since: No American statesman or soldier should ever find his actions judged under the jurisdiction of a foreign court. American justice is enough.

Just a wee reminder that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Navi Pillay, has served as a judge on the ICC.

Whatever France’s shortcomings, it doesn’t deserve this:

Greta Thunberg is in Paris. Yes, as if the French haven’t got enough on their assiettes with ‘youths’ and ‘students’ reducing the cradle of European civilisation to smoking ruins, the overgrown Shirley Temple of Stockholm rocked up this morning outside a school in Saint-Denis. She told the crowd, ‘Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us!’

The clumsy structure of the latter sentence gave me an eerie sensation of an Armageddon-themed ABBA lyric. I can picture a mournful Frida singing it over flickering firelight.

Greta certainly gets around, doesn’t she?

The Spectator calls Greta a “protest addict.”

Oh, brother.

A raid by the feds on a controversial lawmaker’s D.C. residence this close to the midterms can’t help but trigger a firestorm.

The New York Times plays the pre-dawn Monday raid on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s house straightforwardly:

The court-approved search of her Washington-area home comes after Department of Homeland Security officials said in recent months that they were investigating Ms. Omar, a Democrat, over her family’s immigration paperwork. More recently, some federal investigators have also sought to investigate other issues, such as Ms. Omar’s finances, campaign funds and interactions with a foreign citizen, as The New York Times previously reported.

The three people who described the execution of the search warrant spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

The search warrant, executed 22 days before Election Day, lists a series of potential immigration crimes under investigation, including false statements and fraud in immigration paperwork, as well as a general conspiracy charge, according to a person familiar with the document.

The New York Post report carried the story forward:

The most likely scenario, multiple people claimed, is that immigration cops are looking into a long-floated rumor that Omar is actually one year older than she has long claimed to be — a tiny detail that may put her citizenship in jeopardy.

“The big picture here is a federal judge in Washington, DC, signed off on a search warrant. That means there’s probable cause that a federal crime was committed, and there would be evidence of that crime in the area to be searched, which in this case was Representative Omar’s home,” former assistant US attorney Jonathan Fahey told The Post.

Rep. Omar, who is running for re-election, charges that the raid was politically motivated and vows, “I will not be silenced.” Meanwhile, “Ilhan Omar’s shady family history gives Trump plenty of reasons to probe her past” is the headline on Rich Lowry’s measured column:

Much of Ilhan Omar’s family story is a black box, but we are presumably about to learn much more about it. 

She has always responded with angry, uninformative dismissals, even when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — not exactly a right-wing news source — has made inquiries. 

If she’s being smeared, Omar should sit down with a neutral journalist and walk through the details of all this with as many documents as she can muster.

That seems unlikely.

Here is another analysis of questions about Rep. Omar’s immigration history.

In a snub to New York’s large Italian community, Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped the Columbus Day Parade. Insulting, yes, but not enough to mollify the Democratic Socialists of America, who seem to be flexing their muscles and have a new demand for Hizzoner: Fire NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Outside perfervid DSA precincts, Tisch is sometimes seen as “Greatest Police Commissioner of All Time,” who presides over record lows in crime. But the DSA has fallen head over heels in love with criminal illegal immigrant Oscar Belgal, who, with his trusty machete, spent his time menacing the residences of a Washington Heights apartment building before the dear boy had the misfortune of being shot in an encounter with ICE. This led to the DSA’s illogical pressure on Mayor Mamdani to fire Tisch, who runs NYPD, not ICE.

A New York Post editorial urges Mamdani to buck the DSA (“Mamdani would be a fool to fire NYPD Commish Jessica Tisch for keeping NYC safe“):

[DSA leaders] apparently expect cops to arrest feds who are lawfully doing their duty, or at least to get out of the way if lefties want to riot over federal law enforcement.

Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed’s least favorite topic, according to The Free Press, is the Iranian regime. He refuses to answer questions about it. Ms. Must is betting that another not-favorite question is his alleged family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which El-Sayed flatly denied—and then old posts from his sister touting the family’s close association with the Islamist organization resurfaced.

Meanwhile, Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York examines “The high cost of Abdul el Sayed“: Medicare for All is the item El-Sayed consistently emphasizes. York writes:

But even though he has been short on details, el Sayed has had one all-purpose answer to the question of how he would pay for his high-priced proposals. He says it slowly and clearly, apparently so everyone will know he really means it: “Tax. Billionaire. Wealth.”

“It’s that simple,” el Sayed said at his recent debate with Republican opponent Mike Rogers. …

In any event, el Sayed cannot solve the massive math problem that his proposal raises. Start with this fact: the total combined net worth of every billionaire in America adds up to somewhere around $8 trillion to $9 trillion. That is everything they own — money, property, investments, etc. And then look at those estimates of the cost of Medicare for All — around $32 trillion over its first decade.

Do the math. What that means is that the government could confiscate every penny that every billionaire in America has, and it would not be enough to pay for more than a few years of Medicare for All. And then, there would be no more billionaires with wealth to confiscate.

Let’s do some more math. “Trump’s Census Proposal Is a Big Step in Restoring National Unity” is a City Journal headline:

Eliminating race and ethnicity tabulation from the decennial questionnaire will help dismantle identity politics and the grievance industry. …

The boldness of the proposal seems to have caught the Left off guard, but the Trump administration should hold the line against the inevitable blowback. The proposal is indispensable to the success of his overall project. It must, of course, be accompanied by a return to assimilation and a more rational immigration policy.

Put Your Hands Together for Tertullian. Acknowledging the high brilliance of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s address on Western civ in the shadow of the Acropolis last week, the philosopher Wilfrid McClay nevertheless reminds us this morning that “Western Civilization runs Through Jerusalem, too“:

Marco Rubio delivered a truly masterful speech in Athens last week and has won near-universal and deserving acclaim for it. His resounding affirmation of Western civilization—reminding us how much the West owes to the achievements of the ancient Greeks—feels like the beginning of a civilizational rebirth. May it be so.

But there was something important missing from that speech….

Western civilization is far more than the lengthened shadow of the Parthenon. In fact, the civilization of the West is better thought of as a long conversation whose most important constituent elements are called by the names “Athens” and “Jerusalem,” as first expressed by the Church father Tertullian. Athens stands for the spirit of free rational inquiry undertaken in a fully intelligible world whose contours and dimensions are fully commensurable with our powers of understanding. Jerusalem stands for the spirit of piety, which stresses the weakness of human understanding and the inadequacy of unaided human nature.

Beauty is a classical value, too. In “Ugly in the Name of Safety,” Meghan Cox Gurdon deplores a hideous crosswalk safety contraption. The mania for safety above all destroys beauty. Kudos to Ms. Gurdon for invoking the Rubio speech. 

Isn’t it fun to have a witty Secretary of the Treasury? Senator Elizabeth Warren had been writing Secretary Scott Bessent letter after letter on the bond market. Finally, he responded (thanks, Monica Showalter of the American Thinker):

I have received your October 7 letter, which adds to the mounting body of evidence of your complete paucity of knowledge about financial markets. Rather than take my suggestion of studying introductory economics, you have continued your letter-writing crusade and participation in tabloid fodder about the Treasury Department.

Employing Virginia Woolf’s stream of consciousness, Senator Warren naturally makes me think of indigenous peoples, which in turn circuitously reminds me of Christopher Columbus, whom the sane among us celebrated yesterday. Don’t miss “Columbus Deserves His Day,” by Matthew Hennessey in Free Expression.