Author: Charlotte Hays

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaped praise for a polished presidential tryout yesterday in the press briefing room, proving himself “a man of many parts.” Rubio’s boss received some good news too. USA TODAY’s Susan Page reports:

He’s still the boss.

President Donald Trump is beset by rising gas prices, falling approval ratings and an unpopular war in Iran. But in the Indiana primary May 5 he demonstrated his continued grip on the Republican Party by delivering a thumping to a half-dozen state senators who defied his demands to redraw congressional lines.

Of seven GOP senators who earned his ire, five lost their party’s nominations to challengers the president had endorsed, with one race still too close to call.

A Wall Street Journal headline announces that “Trump’s hold on the Republican base” held firm. Aside from the presidential pummeling of rebellious Hoosiers, Vivek Ramaswamy got the nod from Ohio Republicans in his bid to be Governor. Doesn’t the Trump-endorsed entrepreneur seem to have been running for governor forever? More on yesterday’s election results.

That’s not the only good news for the president. “Oil Plunge Quickens on Mideast Optimism” is a Wall Street Journal headline. The president has paused Project Freedom (escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz). Pakistan’s Prime Minister praises the pause, cites “progress” towards a deal with whoever is running Iran these days. Hmmmm…

Among former President Joe Biden’s gifts to the republic are the appointment of two DEI women to positions of prominence. One, Kamala Harris is subject to the will of the voters. Not so Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson is forever (or for life). Justice Jackson has emerged as possibly the most outspoken member of the Court—and not in a good way. George Washington law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley writes about Justice Jackson’s latest foray, legal eccentric and insult (her dissent in an order finalizing the Court’s ruling in the Louisiana gerrymandering case):

Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence. Her often sole dissents and accusatory rhetoric have drawn not just the ire of her conservative colleagues but her liberal colleagues. This week, that tension deepened with a stinging rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch).

… it was Justice Jackson’s language again that drew the attention of her colleagues.

Justice Jackson lambasted the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” In an Orwellian twist, Jackson suggested that others were playing politics as she sought to effectively protect unconstitutional Democratic districts. She suggested that the case exposed “a strong political undercurrent.”

In a post headlined “Alito vs. Jackson,” Powerline characterized Justice Jackson’s dissent as “vituperative” and “impugning” the motives of her colleagues. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal took note of Justice Alito’s “intriguing footnote” in the Louisiana case:

The footnote suggests some pique by Justice Alito about the Court’s long gestation on Callais, and understandably so since Justice Jackson is accusing the majority of playing politics.

With apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein, How Do You Solve a problem like Ketanji?

Unlike Justice Jackson, Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal says, “Good Riddance to Racial Gerrymandering“:

Under segregation, black Americans generally shared a common experience of being second-class citizens. That’s no longer the case, but the supporters of segregated voting districts and racial preferences in hiring and college admissions would have us believe that nothing has really changed. Racial-gerrymandering advocates today assume that black voters are essentially fungible and share identical political preferences. That’s not only false but insulting, and this Supreme Court corrective couldn’t come soon enough.

We now know the name of the suspect in the 2025 fires that ravaged Los Angeles County. The suspect is not somebody who accidentally forgot Smoky Bear’s injunction to snuff out campfires. Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, the alleged firebug, is a full-fledged anti-capitalist admirer of CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione. National Review’s Noah Rothman places Rinderknecht firmly in the elite Left’s tradition of espousing the destruction of other people’s property: 

“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the New York Times’ 1619 Project. “To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral.” The New Yorker editor David Remnick agreed. “We don’t have time to finger-wag at protesters about property,” he wrote of the big-box and mom-and-pop stores alike that were put to the torch. “That can be rebuilt. Target will reopen.” Sure, “looting is counterproductive,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher conceded. “But it’s hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property.”

Then there’s other people’s money. The New York Post cover features New York Governor Kathy Hochul squeezing the Statue of Liberty for more taxes. “Hochul STILL pushes more taxes and a $260 B budget” is the caption. Meanwhile, in Washington state, voters will have no say on a referendum on a new 9.9% levy. Billionaire Ken Griffin says that New York under Mayor Mamdani doesn’t welcome success, so he might take some of his money elsewhere.

Welfare fraud has cost voters untold billions of dollars, but some blue-state leaders are closing ranks … to protect the fraudsters, according to the New York Post. Reason’s Robby Soave observes at The Hill that Medicaid fraud in Ohio is almost exclusively from the Somali community, but that both parties have turned a blind eye to it. He has a radical (in a good way) solution:

Here’s what I’m calling for: Since politicians aren’t going to do anything about fraud, can we get an AI on this? Maybe Claude, or ChatGPT? Let’s ask the computer where the fraud is and how we can get the money back, or at least shut off the fraudsters’ access to it. We need to restore faith in this system and end the stealing.  

Meanwhile, an editorial at the Washington Examiner proposes that Trump’s food stamp reforms are working. Apparently, it was the work requirement that did it.

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced earlier this week. Or, as Powerline has it, “The Pulitzers Strike Again.” The New York Times, according to Ira Stoll at the Washington Free Beacon, “is scrambling to defend the integrity of its Gaza-based photographer and his work, which won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, after a press watchdog organization accused him of ‘staged scenes’ that were closely coordinated with the Hamas terrorist organization.”

Stoll sums up the winning entries:

The prizes largely honored articles that bashed Trump—his alleged abuses of power, his destruction of the federal workforce, his venality—or Israel.

“The Economic Lesson from Weight-Loss Drugs,” by David Goldhill, at City Journal, reveals that selling directly to consumers makes health care more affordable:

Why are GLP-1s getting cheaper while health care remains expensive? The answer lies in what makes GLP-1 drugs different: actual consumers have to pay actual prices.

Writing at The Free Press, Ruy Teixeira tells us, “How the Far Left Tapped into a Money Machine.” It’s radical candidates such as Graham Platner, who is running for the Senate against incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins, who attract the biggest Democratic donors. Teixeira explains how this happened.

Just Indulge Me. Please. Matthew Gadsa of Unherd put his finger on what so bothered me so much about the Met Gala:

At the heart of the Met Gala is a deep cynicism. It takes a premise with which it is hard to disagree — a world-class museum needs more money — and manages to turn the resulting attention and money on the world’s most banal people. All the while, this obscures the immense handicraft of the designers themselves and the larger cultural significance of the Met as an institution. The event further reifies the hold that celebrity has over the American psyche, while conflating fashion as craft or art with fashion as spectacle.

… The Diana Vreeland-era of the Gala during the Seventies and Eighties was at least worthy of envy: tasteful, aristocratic, and actually interested in the museum’s collections and exhibitions. It was a gatekept event, but it wasn’t a circus.

Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson says that reports that the rich are fleeing Seattle’s high taxes are “super overblown,” but even if so, Wilson has a super dismissive message for them: “Bye.”

Wilson was “slammed” for her “wave to tax weary residents” (also known as the tax base) of Seattle. In her self-satisfied remarks, which evoked approving titters from the audience, Wilson “waved good-bye to prosperity,” according to a devastating editorial in the Washington Post. 

The editors noted that Seattle’s most iconic business, Starbucks, already had fled after being targeted by Wilson:

Nine days after winning Seattle’s November mayoral election, Katie Wilson joined Starbucks baristas on a picket line and pledged to boycott the coffee conglomerate until their union got its way. The socialist will need to wait a while longer for her caffeine fix.

In March, after Wilson took office, the chain said it would close five additional stores in Seattle, including four that had unionized. Starbucks said they were selected because of poor financial performance and bad customer experiences.

Then, last week, Starbucks announced it will establish a new corporate hub in Nashville, investing $100 million and bringing up to 2,000 jobs.

The 43-year-old Wilson, who received a $10,000 allowance from her parents last year, is defiant about the consequences of her antagonism toward successful people who create value for society.

The Washington Post goes on to note that such arrogance is increasingly typical of the state’s elites. More details on Wilson’s background. On the drive to eliminate those annoying rich people, another Washington Post editorial (I’m telling you—the WaPo’s editorial pages are getting better by the day) says that California stands to lose revenue if the 5% billionaire tax goes into effect. 

Meanwhile, the other famous socialist Mayor, New York’s Zohran Mamdani, was elected on the false promise that he would “immediately” freeze rent on rent-controlled apartments for four years—easier said than done:

Since taking office, however, he has been forced to recognize what the law has made clear from the start: He cannot set rents himself, and overt interference with the independent RGB could expose a rent freeze to a legal challenge.

So Mamdani has found another way.

His Office of Mass Engagement will soon recruit so-called volunteers to fan out across selected neighborhoods and encourage rent-stabilized tenants to attend the hearings.

In other words, City Hall is mobilizing the constituency most likely to support the mayor’s preferred outcome while insisting it is merely promoting civic participation.

He’s paying lip service to the RGB’s independence while directing a government office to organize a campaign ensuring the board “answers to the people it serves” — an ominous phrase that gives away Organize NYC’s actual purpose.

The mayor insists the effort aims to educate, not advocate. According to Mass Engagement Commissioner and DSA veteran Tascha Van Auken, the volunteers are “not advocating for any specific outcome or position.”

Don’t be fooled. …

Not an Escort Service. In an arm’s-length effort to unblock the vital supply waterway that doesn’t involve escorts by U.S. warships, President Trump says the U.S. will “guide” stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. denies Iran’s claim to have hit a warship in the Strait. Is the blockade the U.S. strategy that finally makes a difference? A news story in the Wall Street Journal suggests as much:

For almost five decades, Iran’s Islamic government has survived financial pressure from the U.S. by selling oil to China. It confronted American military might with guerrilla tactics. But with the U.S. Navy’s blockade, that strategy might have met its match, analysts said.

Epic Brilliance. According to Rich Lowry, Operation Epic Fury is highlighting the utter brilliance of “Drill, baby, drill”:

“Drill, baby, drill” is arguably the most successful public policy of the last 20 years.

On top of sweeping innovations forged by private industry, President Donald Trump has driven a stake through the heart of Joe Biden’s “net zero” energy policy — based the delusion that we could phase out fossil fuels — and has pursued US “energy dominance” instead.

The Western hemisphere stands to gain from the Iran crisis, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz underlines the inherent risks of reliance on Middle Eastern suppliers. 

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal explains how Russia helps Iran by providing intel to help target Americans:

President Trump is clear-eyed about the threat from Iran, but he seems to view Russia with Kremlin-colored glasses. Perhaps he needs an intelligence briefing on the extent of Russian aid for Iran. Vladimir Putin hosted Iran’s foreign minister in St. Petersburg recently, and evidence is accumulating that the Kremlin has been helping Iran with intelligence to target Americans.

While trying to shoo off rich people—who provide tax revenue—our friends on the left welcome illegal aliens, who too often don’t stop doing illegal things just because they are here. The New York Post cover today features an illegal alien who butchered two Long Island women. The newspaper reports:

An illegal migrant on Long Island fatally butchered a beloved mom of three and another woman in separate savage attacks — before calling cops and calmly confessing he “killed somebody,’’ police said.

Rony Yahir Alvarenga Rivera, 22, of El Salvador — who entered the US as an unaccompanied 12-year-old in 2016 — knifed a 42-year-old coworker and mom to death at an Island Park Wendy’s around 12:30 a.m. Friday, authorities said.

Three hours earlier, around 9 p.m. Thursday, Rivera had hacked his 32-year-old roommate to death at their Valley Stream apartment, according to Nassau County police.The tragic woman was identified by cops as Eddy Raquel Hernandez Castillo.

Rivera later went to his job at Wendy’s and killed de Aguila, cops said.

Advocates of illegal immigration are particularly sympathetic to unaccompanied minors such as Rivera. California Governor Gavin Newsom, in particular, has been on an illegal alien funding spree. 

“Hasan Piker is left’s Nick Fuentes. Why do they embrace him?” is the headline on an Ingrid Jaques column at USA TODAY. Good question:

The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg has called Fuentes, a 27-year-old online influencer, a “Hitler-loving white nationalist.” The Times has run ominous headlines like “Nick Fuentes’s Rise Puts MAGA Movement in a ‘Time of Choosing’ ” and “Nick Fuentes: A White Nationalist Problem for the Right.”

Meanwhile, the news media largely ignores the rise of a similarly repugnant force on the left: Hasan Piker. Piker, 34, has more than 3 million followers and streams hours of political content each day on Twitch.

Piker is an anti-Zionist, capitalist-hating Marxist who appears far too comfortable with political violence, so long as it serves the “right” cause.

Piker’s growing popularity among progressives has coincided with a broader and deeply disturbing rise in left-wing tolerance for political violence.

In a Politico story headlined “Inside the Quiet Republican Effort to Flip Fetterman,” Jonathan Martin raises a chilling specter: What if the maverick Democrat from Pennsylvania did switch? The Dems could help themselves by listening to Fetterman, but that is a bridge too far. Another rich guy: Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal says, “We’re going to miss Tim Cook,” the Apple CEO who is retiring. And an editorial at the same esteemed outlet on the end of Spirit Airlines starts this way:

The demise of Spirit Airlines is a tragedy for its 15,000 or so employees, though at least taxpayers weren’t forced to pay for a bailout. But the airline’s closure shouldn’t pass without giving dubious credit to the main culprits: The antitrust theorists of the Biden Administration.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, NOT a socialist but known as “America’s Mayor for his stewardship of the city after 9/11, is in critical but stable condition in a Florida hospital. The increasingly ghoulish Jimmy Kimmel made an ill-timed quip about Giuliani, 81, “calling [him] from the grave.” President Trump weighed in, decrying “radical left lunatics” for their treatment of Giuliani. Thoughts and prayers for the former Mayor.