Category: Daily Musts

In a no-holds-barred final debate for arguably the most fascinating midterm race in the nation, neither candidate held back. Republican Senate hopeful Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed clashed onstage in Michigan:

The neck-and-neck race is one of the nation’s most closely watched contests in the November midterms and could help determine which party wins control of the Senate. Democrats hope to take advantage of Mr. Trump’s unpopularity and voters’ frustration with inflation and the Iran War. Republicans have sought to capitalize on divisions between progressives like El-Sayed and more moderate Democrats on Middle East policy and Medicare for All. 

El-Sayed called Rogers’ platform a “MAGA vision” and argued the former congressman “stand[s] hip-to-hip with Donald Trump on all of his worst policies…. “He’s going to bend to Donald Trump because he is a sock puppet for the man,” said El-Sayed.

Rogers pushed back at one point, saying: “He wants to make this about Donald Trump. The bingo game ought to be: ‘How many times can he put Trump in any answer?'” 

El-Sayed mentioned Trump 18 times, according to Fox Digital, which dubbed President Trump “the unofficial third person on stage.” Rogers said that some of El-Sayed’s supporters are tied to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Rogers asked, “Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Things became heated:

The most contentious moment of the debate came during a question on public safety, when Rogers hammered El-Sayed over his past support for defunding the police, accused him of deleting social media posts on the issue and pointed to El-Sayed’s past comments involving former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

El-Sayed fired back that it was “beneath” Rogers to question his commitment to the Constitution, declaring that he was “proud to be an American” and calling Rogers’ line of questioning “shameful.”

Rogers did not question El-Sayed’s “commitment to the Constitution”; Rogers instead asked him about alleged ties to Islamist organizations and issues, both relevant. Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York raised the notion that El-Sayed’s evasiveness might be turning the tide against him:

Had el Sayed said simply, “Yes, I disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,” he might have put a quick end to the discussion. Instead, he engaged the questioner in a extended exercise in misdirection. His main strategy was to argue that questions about his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood somehow violated the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

Another Senate race is suddenly in the spotlight. The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim writes about “Michele Tafoya in the Red Zone,” asking if Republican Tafoya could win a Senate seat from Minnesota, which hasn’t elected a Republican to a statewide office in two decades. Swaim writes: 

… Michele Tafoya, is that rare thing in recent American politics: a strong candidate. Fans of the National Football League, of which there are many in Minnesota, remember Ms. Tafoya as for many years an NFL sideline reporter for ABC, ESPN and, from 2011 to 2022, NBC. Ms. Tafoya, an on-camera natural, has the added ability to explain policy views in crisp terms and with a smile.

Woman in the Arena. Six years after taking the controversial position that transgender activism poses a threat to women’s rights, J.K. Rowling has penned an update. It’s magnificent. Rowling says that, when she talks about trans activism, her critics often demand to know how it affects her. She responds:

It’s true, of course, that trans activism doesn’t impact all women negatively. In fact, the more privileged you are, the less it tends to affect you, and the more it might benefit you. Aside from an avalanche of death, rape and torture threats, it hasn’t noticeably affected my life. Nor does it hurt wealthy women who repost the vogueish mantras while sitting in dressing rooms guarded by private security guards.

It doesn’t hurt women in the upper echelons of media, publishing and academia, who don’t need a changing room at work and who feel a snobbish disdain for working class women who don’t want to strip off in front of heterosexual males who’ve ‘identified’ into the women’s changing room. Trans activism doesn’t hurt headline-hungry female politicians whose attitude to women’s rights is ‘whatever is good for me personally’. On the contrary, trans activism has been good for those women. It’s fashionable, and keeps them popular with their progressive tribe, and costs them, personally, absolutely nothing.

“Activist Psychiatrists Are Afraid of Evidence” in the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section is also concerned with the issue of “gender ideology.” A psychiatrist and the medical officer of the organization Do No Harm say that the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) refuses to let them discuss and put the issue on the agenda for an upcoming meeting. They write:

Aacap’s message is clear: The academy would rather circle the wagons around child gender transition than hold an open debate on whether this is good clinical practice. The annual meeting’s schedule has been released, and it includes only sessions that treat pediatric gender transition as settled science and medically necessary care. So much for balance and a diversity of views.

Okay, this shouldn’t be a hard question. Rep. lhan Omar addresses allegations she married her brother after federal raid:

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., dismissed longstanding allegations that she married her brother for immigration purposes as “insane” during a Wednesday interview, while saying she was unaware of any familial relationship with her former husband.

“Not to my knowledge,” Omar told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes when asked whether there was any “weird kernel of truth” to allegations involving her ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi..

Who says a billionaire’s tax won’t affect the behavior of billionaires? Mark Zuckerberg feared the billionaire’s tax so much that he threatened to leave California, but Meta’s board cut him a deal. Proponents of the billionaire tax forget that billionaires are—well—billionaires and thus more able than the rest of us to respond to destructive taxes.

Is there really a chance of peace? “A (very) small glimmer of hope that Putin will finally make peace” is the headline above a New York Post editorial. Meanwhile, David Ignatius of the Washington Post writes:

Vladimir Putin is hardly a “humanitarian,” despite the cringe-worthy homage that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff paid to him in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. But is the Russian president ready to begin serious peace negotiations to halt the brutal war in Ukraine?

That’s what a top Kremlin aide claimed after the meeting, but we won’t know if it’s true until Russia, Ukraine and the United States begin negotiations that officials close to the talks said are tentatively set to start in November. This fledgling peace effort is at least moving in the right direction, though. For a change, the United States, Europe, Ukraine and Russia have found a framework for discussing an end to the war.

We’re learning more about a purely fabricated, fake poll. The latest poll is always a boon for lazy reporters, but it’s a good idea to verify them. A New York Post story suggests that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is lazy and more interested in being in the spotlight than working. Ominous lead to a Powerline post:

A hallmark of a failed state is when politicians and their supporters can’t afford to give up power, because they will be criminally prosecuted by their successors if they do. Democrats have already tried to jail Donald Trump and various other Republicans, and they are now talking openly about bringing bogus prosecutions for the purpose of deterring people–young people, specifically–from coming out as Republicans.

Ms. Must owes you something positive after that. From “American Exceptionalism Is No Myth” in Free Expression, which argues that it’s better over here:

The Brits themselves don’t seem to see it. When asked to imagine how they’d fit into the 50-state U.S. economic hierarchy, they rank themselves in the top 10. That is so far off the mark as to qualify as delusional. The U.S. contains within itself more than four dozen economic statelets that are more productive per-capita than the place that once produced Rolls-Royce, the Beatles, Harry Potter and my No. 1 guy, Daniel Day-Lewis.

Mississippi drinks their milkshake.

The Trump administration’s war on fraud received a big boost yesterday when a whistleblower incentive was announced at a gathering in the Oval Office.

“Snitches Get Riches” in the New York Post’s headline lingo. Congrats to the program’s first reward recipient: journalist Nick Shirley, who exposed welfare among members of Minnesota’s politically powerful Somali community. Here’s what Shirley said:

It’s such an honor to be here. I want people to think about what’s happening right now. Very cool. Me, as a 24-year-old, I exposed the fraud. I was concerned about the well-being of our tax dollars, but right now I’m standing next to the president of the United States. And now people who expose fraud—there’s never been an incentive for anyone to ever expose fraud.

In fact, when I exposed fraud, instead of the mainstream media investigating the fraud, they investigated me. People actually wanted to kill me after I exposed the fraud. 

The MSM studiedly looked away from Minnesota’s widespread welfare fraud, but there are signs that the state’s voters aren’t as willfully blind. Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal could deliver a stunning Senate upset, writes Hugh Hewitt. Republican nominee for the Senate Michele Tafoya is giving Governor Tim Walz’s Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan a real race. Hewitt writes:

“This historic fraud happened under her watch, and suddenly, she’s looking out for Medicaid and SNAP? Sell it to someone else, Peggy.”

A longtime NFL broadcast professional, Tafoya demonstrated decades of quick on-camera thinking in her debate last week with Flanagan and combined it with a deft slash at Flanagan’s greatest vulnerability. …

A federal prosecutor estimated the amount of fraud in Minnesota’s spending at as much as $9 billion — that’s a “b” as in “billion.” That is a remarkable sum given the Gopher State’s population of fewer than 6 million souls and an annual budget of about $67 billion. To squander an amount equal to close to 15% of a state’s budget on thieves and con artists is staggering.

The Free Press, however, has news that will be discouraging to the GOP. “How the GOP Could Lose Texas,” by Audrey Fahlberg, notes that Democrat Senate hopeful James Talarico is leading Republican Ken Paxton in nearly every recent poll. Former first daughter Barbara Bush has “openly” donated to the Tallarico campaign.

New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn posits that the map favors Republicans, but cracks in their base are leaving them vulnerable in defending House and Senate control. Democrats are way ahead, but polling accurately is difficult:

In today’s polarized era of closely fought elections, it can be hard to believe that a party could win by that much. The skepticism is not unfounded. The polls have raised the possibility of this kind of overwhelming Republican defeat before in the Trump era, only for the polls to ultimately overestimate Democratic support in 2016, 2020 and, at least in crucial red states, in the 2018 election.

The Washington Free Beacon suggests a possible upset where you’d least expect it. “Saritha Surge Could Be Surprise in New York,” the Beacon announces. Saritha is nonpartisan law enforcement professional Saritha Komatireddy, 42, who turned in a “stunningly good” debate performance against New York AG Tish James:

Not since Sleepy Joe Biden’s national debate meltdown against President Trump has a Democratic incumbent been so devastatingly trounced. James looked like she was in a hostage video.

Meanwhile, Roger Simon asks a tantalizing question: “Are the French riots the Republicans’ October Surprise?” Simon concludes the Substack piece:

The French red-green rioters may have given us a gift by providing absolutely every Republican a great talking point in the waning days of this campaign, a talking point most normal people will respond to. As I type this, Trump is using it in Kansas. Every candidate should too. And so should we with everyone we talk to.

Frank Fured of Spiked Online regards the French riots as a frenzied assault on French civilization:

Unlike the well-known revolts of modern times, these riots seem driven by a profound sense of hatred towards France….

In the past, popular protests in Paris and elsewhere often marched under the French tricolore. But the national flag has been conspicuous by its absence during the course of these riots. On the contrary, the students, casseurs and others were much more likely to be waving the Palestinian flag. One video even shows young students vandalising a school, while draped in Moroccan flags. The preference of the protesters for flags foreign to France has highlighted their cultural detachment from French society, and their emotional distance from France’s republican values.

… In its place, cultural divisions and antagonisms have flourished. That is why the recent wave of violence has appeared as a civil-war-like attack on those citizens and institutions that have chosen to remain loyal to France. It is clear that a significant section of society – principally from immigrant communities – feels alienated from France and regards its institutions and way of life with hatred and contempt.

The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkens writes in a column optimistically headlined “France Must Save Europe“:

France is too big to fail and also too big to bail out. That leaves only one realistic choice: France pulls itself together or takes Europe down with it.

“Flying the Socialist Skies at United.” United CEO Scott Kirby is the latest billionaire to jump on the millionaire tax bandwagon. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal  has a different idea:

There’s also nothing to stop Mr. Kirby from bequeathing his fortune, or donating his $32.3 million in compensation last year, to the feds. Even better, how about offering more leg room in all rows and eliminating middle seats as a gesture to the hoi polloi? We suspect he’d say that none of these suggestions would reduce inequality or the national debt. But the same goes for a wealth tax, which punishes successful entrepreneurs.

“WNBA tells Congress that Enes Kanter Freedom, Royce White are ‘both men’ in eligibility dispute.” Republican Rep. Marlin Stutzman “welcomed WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s statement as an acknowledgment of a distinction based on biological sex.” Still, the WNBA still hasn’t defined what a woman is. It appears likely that the WNBA might decide differently in the case involving men more convincingly identifying as transgender women. But there’s yet another controversy: Two WNBA teams pointedly left the court before the national anthem. Riley Gaines, inaccurately identified as “anti-trans,” says that if you want to represent the U.S., you should stand for the anthem.

“The Smithsonian’s Dwindling Attendance” is documented by Jeffrey Anderson for City Journal. The decline in attendance took place under outgoing Undersecretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Burch, whom Washington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott called “an enormously consequential leader.” Anderson notes:

In his 2019 book A Fool’s Errand, Bunch criticized a museum profession “awash in whiteness” and expressed his desire “to help Americans grapple with their own culpability in creating a society based on slavery.”…

We’re learning more about the Starlink slowdown that hampered military operations in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk gave the order after discussing Ukraine with President Trump. President Trump says he did not order the restrictions. An editorial in the Wall Street is critical of what it suggests is “Trump’s New Global Triumvirate“:

It’s hard to know what President Trump is up to at any one moment because he operates so much on tactical impulse. But he has long coveted grand bargains with Russia and China, and that may be his motivation now as he hardens his hostility to Ukraine and Europe and courts a Yalta 2 summit with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

A story at The Free Press yesterday asked if President Trump might be preparing to trade Ukraine for Iran. Russia has just released American teacher Stephen Hubbard from a Russian prison. No swap necessary, said Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Unfortunately, Putin was fresh from arresting a Japanese journalist.

And here’s something nice for you, Dear Reader. Free Expression columnist Meghan Gurdon’s column this morning is a charming excerpt from her new memoir, “Free Range Girl.” It’s about Meghan’s girlhood in Maine. The chapter is about Meghan’s first babysitting experience. A sheer delight.  

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.