Mamdani to Trump: Let’s Do a Meeting. Diogenes, Meet Rep. Clay Higgins. DHHS Report: No Evidence for ‘Trans’ Treatment for Kids. And Much More
Will this meeting result in one of those chummy Oval Office pressers that are a hallmark of the second Trump term? Maybe not.
New York’s socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is scheduled for a sit down with President Trump tomorrow at the White House. This will be their first (and last?) meeting. Politico reports:
“Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting. We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21st,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said the mayor and president would discuss public safety, economic security and “the affordability agenda that over one million New Yorkers voted for just two weeks ago.” …
“I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers, and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city,” Mamdani added.
Axios notes that the meeting will matter because President Trump has the authority to withhold federal money from New York. Will Mamdani try to use the meeting to embarrass the president? If not, what will his Democratic Socialists of America comrades think? The Free Press takes us “Inside the DSA’s Strategy to Influence Mayor-Elect Mamdani.” “After propelling him to victory as mayor, the political group has a plan to hold his feet to the fire,” TFP author Olivia Reingold argues. She writes:
If Mamdani, a dues-paying member of the DSA since 2017, thinks that winning City Hall means he will be in charge, someone should tell that to the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA). A review of internal materials, public statements, and strategy documents shows an organization that views his election as the start of something much bigger: a plan to maximize their sway with the man they helped put into power—and, when necessary, hold his feet to the fire.
This echoes Sharia law fan and Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour’s vow earlier this month to hold Mamdani accountable. The request for a meeting with President Trump follows Mamdani’s announcement that he will keep respected Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on the job. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal applauds the decision. “The next question is how much harder Mr. Mamdani plans to make her job,” the editors add.
But it’s always good to have somebody dealing with the basics while you are in the initial stage of building the socialist utopia. City Journal examines how Mamdani won. His first order of business may be mundane: rats (of the four-legged variety) have overrun the city, and residents are clamoring for a Rat Czar.
Finally, an example of decency on the Epstein saga front. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal hails “the courageous stand” of Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins. The Republican was the lone vote in the House’s 427-1 tally to release the Epstein files:
An old definition of bipartisanship is when Democrats and Republicans come together to abandon principle. Case in point: Tuesday’s House vote of 427–1 to make the Justice Department release the “Epstein files.” That means unclassified material that couldn’t be used to charge anyone with a crime, but that now can be employed to smear reputations and embarrass opponents.
“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today,” Mr. Higgins wrote Tuesday on social media. “It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America.” He’s right and deserves credit for standing alone.
Mr. Higgins continued: “This type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.” Unfortunately, that has become the point. We don’t know what the files contain, but there’s probably plenty embarrassing. Republicans and Democrats are both hoping that the other party gets the worst of it.
Democrat Stacey Plaskett, Delegate for the Virgin Islands, had a texting relationship (over texting the late pedophile for directions during a House hearing, not sex), but her party rallied around her. She also received campaign donations from Epstein. House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries repeatedly dodged questions about Plaskett. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Rep. Jasmine Crockett falsely accused Republicans of taking donations from Epstein. Her excuse was so lame that National Review’s Jim Gerraghty labeled Ms. Crockett “a reckless moron.”
Speaking of labels, the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman, a few days ago, labeled Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “Cabinet Secretary of the Year.” That’s because the Secretary is doing her best to set the DOE, created as a sop to teacher unions, not students or their parents, on the road to oblivion. Libertarian Robby Soave has some ideas on this:
If the day has finally come that a Republican administration is serious about fulfilling its promises and shutting down unnecessary federal bureaucracy, then great. To be clear, however, we should not merely shuffle all the existing functions of the department to other agencies: We should eliminate unnecessary, counterproductive and unconstitutional interference from the federal government into states’ education policies.
Closing the Department of Education is one of those ideas that really spooks liberal Democrats, even though it’s far less radical an idea than they are willing to admit. For starters, the department is simply unconstitutional: The Constitution does not grant the federal government any power to regulate education. That’s reason enough to close down.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel also has kind words for McMahon’s mission:
On Tuesday the Education Department announced “six new agency partnerships” designed to “break up the federal education bureaucracy.” This is legalese. McMahon is transferring entire pieces of the Education Department remit to other departments.
That’s the administration’s strategy for wind-down, and it’s smart.
Follow the Science. “Even Liberal Scientists Agree — It’s Time to Stop the Madness of Medical Intervention for Gender-confused Kids” is the headline on Kirsten Fleming’s New York Post column, pegged to an important new report from DHSS:
Sensible people already know that medicalizing children in the name of so-called “gender affirming care” is not only experimental, it’s barbaric.
Now, a peer-reviewed study, commissioned by the Department of Health And Human Services, reports that the evidence used to back such practices as hormone therapy for kids is flimsy at best.
There just isn’t enough known to justify such drastic medical interventions for young people.
The other Post also covered the DHSS report, admitting that its authors, several whose names you will recognize, are “not ideological cranks; they are thoughtful researchers,” but it calls an accurate statement about these life-changing procedures (for example, the devastatingly accurate “mutilation” in lieu of the purposefully obscuring “gender affirming treatments) “hostile rhetoric.
Childrearing Corner: Bethany Mandel’s excellent “Young Women Are Saying ‘Hard Pass’ to Motherhood — This Viral Post Reveals Why.” Real Clear Politics brings us psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “Honestly” interview with Bari Weiss. The takeaway:
Girls spend a lot more time on social media than boys. Liberal girls spend a lot more time than conservative girls. That didn’t used to be the case, but as we get into the 2010s, when everything gets so politicized, we get into the Great Awakening, we get into the polarization, the illiberalism that you and I have really been writing about and talking about for a long time.
As we get into the era, the feeds of the liberal girls gets much more taken over by how terrible the world is, everything’s sexist, you’re not gonna get ahead. And this is like the greatest era of female progress that we’re going through. But liberal girls are sort of caught in a set of disempowering ideas.
In closing, Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro has a backup plan. … Joy Reid reveals what she doesn’t want to see in the women’s locker room. … And Spiked Online reveals what was wrong with the Nuremberg Trials. Was Sir Winston Churchill right when he said, “Just shoot ‘em”? (Not a direct quotation)
… Former Vice President Dick Cheney is praised by ace writer Barton Swaim for the stuff he got right in the Middle East. … Even more iconoclastic, a reevaluation of Francisco Franco, who died 80 years ago today.
