Category: Daily Musts

Let’s hope April will not be a—you know—cruel month for resolving, or partially resolving, the Iran conflict.

In “Trump’s Perilous Straits,” the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel contends that President Trump faces political trouble if he “bugs out of Iran” prematurely:

How this conflict ends matters more than when, both strategically and politically. Republicans need to emerge with an obvious, definable success. Anything less adds a huge new liability to a GOP that is already rolling into a midterm election with a disadvantage….

A messy “defeat”—as this cease-fire is being aptly defined—will be one more grievance for American voters to add to their frustrations with the current party in power—Republicans. It’s in Mr. Trump’s hands.

A counterargument is that when this war ends matters as much as how it ends, suggesting that a quick exit is one of the president’s most important tasks. Vice President J.D. Vance, the administration figure known to have been most against the war, is flying to Pakistan today to join Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner to negotiate an end to the war.

Who will be sitting on the other side of the table? “Meet the New Faces of the Iranian Regime” is the headline on Eli Lake’s report at The Free Press. Lake describes the Iranian negotiators as “a small team of mainly hard-liners who are determined not to capitulate.” General Jack Keane writes an op-ed headlined “Iran Will Try to String Us Along and Sell Us a Bad Deal — but Businessman Trump Won’t Let It Happen”:

Iran got exactly what it wanted out of the cease-fire agreement announced Tuesday night.

Now it’s up to President Donald Trump to make sure the regime’s short-term win doesn’t become a lasting strategic victory.

When Trump ordered a halt to the US air assault on Iran, American and Israeli forces were perhaps 10 days to two weeks away from wiping out Iran’s remaining ballistic missile launchers, underground storage sites, military production facilities and related non-defense industries….

While we don’t know exactly what the many points of the White House deal truly are, what has appeared in media reports appears essential to establish a foolproof deal with verification: no remaining nuclear capability, restrictions on numbers and range of ballistic missiles, and no support to proxies, to name a few. …

The idea that these guys are less radical than the pre-war leadership is just not true — and we have to be clear-eyed about that reality.

Keane writes that opening the Strait of Hormuz is as important as the nuclear issue. Telegraph columnist Tom Sharpe argues that if Iran were allowed to charge for ships to go through the Strait—i.e., operate a toll booth—it would run counter to the longstanding principle of freedom of navigation. Here you can see which ships are passing through the Straits.

Meanwhile, Douglas Murray writes:

It is too early to know whether the latest ceasefire will hold. But it is early enough to know that it should not. Not if America is going to achieve any of its objectives in the region….

One of the first stated objectives of this war has been the overthrow of the Revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. That objective has not been achieved.

While Washington is in the throes of Iran fever, First Lady Melania Trump curiously picked the moment to deliver a surprise address rejecting the notion that she was ever associated in any way with the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Even sources usually plugged in to Trump World were baffled, according to the (albeit lefty) Guardian. Maybe she’d just had enough of it all? In her statement, Mrs. Trump called for hearings to allow Epstein survivors to speak. Didn’t she know a Republican First Lady Just Can’t Win? Survivors took issue:

“Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice,” they said in a joint statement, demanding the Trump administration release the remaining Epstein files.

The New York Post cover this morning features a picture of a former New York cop with the headline “Jailed for Doing His Job.” Erik Duran of the NYPD, who had an unblemished record of service, is the man pictured. An opinion piece in the New York Post describes the blatantly unfair verdict against him:

In what can only be described as an egregious miscarriage of justice, Duran, a 16-year veteran with an exemplary record, was hauled out of Bronx Criminal Court after being sentenced by Judge Guy Mitchell to 3 to 9 years in prison.

Duran was convicted after a bench trial in February of manslaughter in the second degree for causing the death of Eric Duprey, a drug dealer with a criminal record. …

While trying to escape arrest in an August 2023 buy-and-bust operation, Duprey fled the scene after he was caught selling cocaine to an undercover cop.

Duran made a split-second decision to thwart Duprey’s potentially deadly path.

Duran grabbed a water cooler and threw it toward Duprey, who crashed the vehicle and died of a head injury.

The piece rightly calls the verdict a “dark day” for law enforcement. Mayor Mamdani “sought to affirm his control over the Police Department on Wednesday, saying he would overrule its commissioner if he felt it necessary.” The Mayor ranks above Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Of course, he can overrule her. Anytime. It was an unnecessary statement, a sop to his radical followers. That Mamdani felt he had to say this does not bode well for the future of law enforcement in New York.

Insufferable Wise Latina. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently discussed a Court ruling concerned with the “reasonable suspicion” that must be present before federal agents decide to question someone they suspect might be in the country illegally. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal highlights her “profiling” of Justice Brett Kavanaugh:

“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” Justice Sotomayor said. “And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” Even if somebody stopped by immigration officers gets released, “those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,” she added, “and that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.”

While that’s empathetic, what does it have to do with the law? 

[Sotomayor’s dissent joined by the other liberal Justices] was overheated, and this week the Justice underscored how much her jurisprudence is based on identity and political results, not law and precedent.

In “The Truth about Medicare Advantage,” Wall Street Journal opinion editors explain why Medicare Advantage, used by about half of older Americans, is under attack by Democrats:

Payments are adjusted for medical risk factors, so insurers are paid more to cover sicker beneficiaries. This is intended to prevent plans that discourage seniors with costly medical conditions from enrolling. Insurers use savings from reducing waste to lower patient costs and offer supplemental benefits like dental and vision care. Democrats claim insurers are reaping outsize profits, but their margins are capped by law. …

Insurers are a bipartisan scapegoat for rising Medicare spending. … Democrats dislike Advantage because they prefer government-run healthcare, though the latter has higher costs. The opposition to Advantage is ideological, no matter the facts.

Speaking of older citizens (“senior citizens,” the supposed euphemism is so creepy and creaky, isn’t it?), AEI’s resident demographer Nicholas Eberstadt writes in a paper titled “Can a Depopulating America Still Flourish?” that, fortunately, we can, but that people will have to work longer.

The U.S.’s falling fertility rate, the crisis, is also on the mind of Aspen Beat writer Glen Beaton. Beaton hits on Social Security, which relies on population growth, and other economic issues, but he also touches on the (in my opinion) far more important philosophical issues. Beaton’s take on these matters didn’t satisfy me, so may I mount my trusty hobby horse and beg you to read P.D. James’ The Children of Men. In the book, a great mystery writer addresses the frightening existential mystery behind what we reduce to “the fertility crisis.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the very avatar of Democrat Woman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was that so hard, Your Majesty?