Will the Mullahs Fall? Supreme Court Seen as Likely to Uphold ‘Trans’ Ban in Women’s Sports. Justice Jackson STILL Struggling with ‘Woman’ Question. Dark Woke. And More
The suffering of Iranians protesting the mullah regime is epic. So is the courage. “‘Shoot to Kill’: Accounts of Brutal Crackdown Emerge from Iran,” is a New York Times headline. According to the story, as many as 3,000 protesters are “feared dead.”
“My Hell in Iran’s Regime of Death. As Trump Vows ‘Help Is on the Way,” is the New York Post cover headline. Inside the paper, an unidentified Iranian woman describes “the horrible truth about what’s really happening.” She begins:
As I write this, I have just heard the news of another death — the fifth in just a few days in my close circle. This time, it was my close friend’s cousin.
He was at a protest with his wife and he saw a green light — presumably from a gun laser — that landed on her face. He thought only of protecting his wife, stood in front of her, and he was shot in the face and killed.
Like so many of the dead, the regime is now charging families “bullet fees” before they will return the bodies. His family had to pay 500 million tomans (roughly $5000) to get him back, and they buried him today.
The woman believes that “this time it’s different” and that the regime will come to an end. President Trump threatened to take “very strong action” against the Iranian regime if anti-government protesters are executed. But what? President Trump had a stirring message on Truth Social. Iranians are desperate for concrete help. Will Iran fall, and can the U.S. do anything to help? asks AEI’s Danielle Pletka.
The Iranian protests have not attracted much attention from the Left. “Iranian Civilians Are Being Massacred to the Sound of Progressive Silence,” National Review states. But DNC chair Ken Martin outrageously said that in Minneapolis and Tehran, “people are rising up against systems that wield violence without accountability.”
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal took Martin to task:
“If comparing the U.S. to Iran makes you angry, ask why,” Martin wrote. “Killing protesters. Crushing dissent. Kidnapping and disappearing legal citizens. Ignoring courts. Threatening critics. Terrorizing communities. That’s authoritarian behavior—anywhere.”
Overwrought rhetoric on domestic affairs is one thing. Yoking a false image of U.S. authoritarianism to the freedom struggle in Iran is morally obtuse. It’s a slur against his own country. It also undermines the Iranian people, who count on the U.S. and call desperately for its help, to say that America is yet another murderous tyranny, comparable to their own. Mr. Martin essentially told Iranians that the U.S. is on the side of their regime.
The opposite is true. The mullahs fear the U.S., which stands athwart the global axis of authoritarians and is looked to by freedom-seekers in Tehran and freedom-keepers in Taipei, Jerusalem and even Kyiv. Unlike Mr. Martin, they know what authoritarianism is.
Meanwhile, National Review decries as “self-destructive” the Trump administration’s decision to investigate the wife of Renee Good, the woman killed in Minneapolis. Several DOJ prosecutors resigned, allegedly because of this. Townhall says there’s another explanation, but leaves us waiting for it. Scott Johnson of Powerline has nothing but accolades for Joe Thompson, who resigned.
Meanwhile, lawyer George Terwilliger III writes about “ICE, Minneapolis and the Rule of Law” in the Wall Street Journal:
Whatever the politics of all this, the legal merits are strongly on the administration’s side. The notion that a city makes itself a “sanctuary” by welcoming, embracing and protecting illegal aliens who are violent criminals does violence to the English language and to innocent residents trying to live and work there in peace. Mr. Frey, along with state and local officials and community “activists” in other “sanctuary” cities like Chicago and Portland, Ore., accuse the Trump administration of abandoning the rule of law, while they themselves flout the law by encouraging civilians to interfere with federal law-enforcement operations and ordering the local police to stand down.
The Supreme Court was the place to be yesterday. The Justices heard oral arguments in a case involving two states that have banned men from women’s sports. The Court is seen as likely to allow the bans to continue. When Justice Samuel Alito asked the question, “What is a woman?” the lawyer for men in women’s sports could only flail about. National Review suggests that Alito’s question “cut to the heart of the question.”
I know. I know. You want to know how Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was stumped at her confirmation hearings by this very question, performed. She did not disappoint (here, here, here, and here). The Federalist suggests that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett “bought into” transgender rhetoric, but still, he believes the Court will uphold the bans.
The Times They Are A-Changing: “To Save Public Education, Look to Mississippi” is the headline on Jason Riley’s column this week. Mississippi hasn’t always been a leader in education, but now leads the nation by many measures thanks to a back-to-basics approach. Riley writes:
The good news is that successful public education models exist, and they’re starting to receive more attention. Mississippi’s education transformation over the past decade recently received a glowing assessment in the New York Times, of all places. The conventional wisdom, long advocated by the Times’s editors and other liberals, is that poverty largely explains learning gaps and that more school spending will result in better educational outcomes. Yet Mississippi, which spends less per student than almost every other state, is outperforming other states with far larger education budgets. …
How did the Magnolia State pull it off? “It did not do so by relying on some of the most common proposals held up as solutions in education, like reducing class sizes, or dramatically boosting student funding,” according to the Times. “Rather, the state pushed through a vast list of other changes from the top down, including changing the way reading is taught, in an approach known as the science of reading, but also embracing contentious school accountability policies other states have backed away from.”
“The White Women Turning to Dark Woke” is the headline on Emily Jashinsky’s Unherd piece. According to Jashinsky, women are “turning private despair to public rage.” She writes:
Why are white liberal women especially eager for battle? People like Good are motivated by a sincere commitment to social justice, to be sure. Good was so moved by the prospect of ICE deportations in Minneapolis that she joined a midday protest after dropping off her 6-year-old at school.
However, there is also no shortage of research in recent years showing that young women on the Left struggle more with mental health than do other cohorts.
Meanwhile, in “I Joined ICE Watch,” Free Press writer Olivia Reingold takes us inside the world of anti-ICE activists.
“From ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ to ‘Drive, Baby, Drive’” is the headline on Frank Miele’s commentary on whether certain hallmark statements in volatile moments are actually true—or just useful:
I am talking in particular about the near-universally repeated narrative that Good’s wife, Becca, shouted, “Drive, baby, drive!” in the split second before Good was killed. The phrase appears to have traveled with early write-ups of the Alpha News-distributed agent-perspective video, then hardened into “fact” as larger outlets repeated it. That goes for everyone from right-wing Just the News (“Drive, baby! Drive, drive!”) to left-wing CNN (the more common “Drive, baby, drive!”).
From the time I first read this representation, I began publicly questioning the interpretation by posting comments online. I’ve listened to the audio hundreds of times by now, and there is no way I can hear those words. Instead, I watch Becca Good hear an officer shout, “Get out of the f—ing car” at her wife, try the passenger door handle and realize it is locked, and then recognize that Renee is preparing to accelerate. At that point she screams in panic either “Do not drive!” or more likely “Don’t drive!”
There’s a good piece on foster care at City Journal. Why are there so many homes waiting to receive children? It is a heartbreaking situation that starts with the licensing process.
And finally, why on earth is James Comer giving this woman an opportunity to grandstand?
