Pivot in Minneapolis. What If ICE Agents Wore White Gloves & Were Gentle? Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Western Feminism Bad For Women. Sebastian Junger: Men & Democrats. More
The “Minnesota pivot” occurred after 48 hours changed President Trump’s mind, according to a news story in the Wall Street Journal. “Finally, a Path to Stop the Minnesota Madness,” a New York Post editorial responds to the pivot:
With Border Czar Tom Homan headed to take charge of Homeland Security efforts in Minneapolis and President Donald Trump finding some common ground with Gov. Tim Walz, a rapid reduction in tensions is thankfully well under way.
Alex Pretti’s death plainly prompted a sobering all around, as it should.
We’re glad to see Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem elbowed aside. Her performance in recent weeks as the situation in Minnesota escalated out of control did not serve the president or the country well.
Without anyone backing off on matters of principle, state and federal leaders now can find some accommodation to avoid the lunatic faceoffs between federal agents and crowds of protesters and agitators.
Iced Barbie: The Homeland Security Secretary, who is vying with President Trump for the Left’s “Most Likely to Get Impeached” award, met with the president and other administration heavies for two hours yesterday. The administration is distancing itself from several of Secretary Noem’s more incendiary remarks, but her job is reportedly not in jeopardy.
Democrats, meanwhile, are not distancing themselves from the potential of a partial government shutdown to allow showboating over DHS funding. The hated ICE already is funded until 2029, so go figure.
Calm in Minnesota is devoutly to be wished, but it’s hard to paper over the fundamental issue is: to depart, or not to deport? “Does America Have the Resolve to Deport Illegal Border Crossers?” the headline above Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York’s column:
Speaking about Minneapolis, the writer Mickey Kaus said, “The local protesters do not want the illegals deported, period. Even if the ICE force was incredibly well trained, wore white gloves, and followed Waldorf-Astoria rules of etiquette, if they are effective, local dissenters will press forward with resistance until it produces confrontations and some violence. That’s the way it worked in the antiwar movement I was a part of.”
That is certainly the way it is working in Minneapolis. The question for immigration activists is whether they can set off similar struggles around the country. …
The Federalist’s Eddie Scarry writes that, while Democrats are willing to die to prevent deportations, that must not stop law enforcement. As I mentioned yesterday, a weekend editorial in the Wall Street Journal urged the president to consider a pause in Minnesota, but The Federalist declares that “Trump should talk to Angel Parents before he takes ICE out of Minneapolis.”
Hard-charging federal agent Gregory Bovino—who became such a fixation for the Left that the New York Times devoted a style piece to his attire (“When a Coat Becomes a Symbol of Conflict”)—is being removed from Minneapolis and sent elsewhere. The Daily Caller dubs his replacement, Homan, “Old Reliable.” Don’t think any of this means the streets are quiet.
Bill McGurn’s Wall Street Journal column is headlined “Sanctuary Cities Can Be Deadly.” McGurn argues that tensions could be reduced if local police departments were allowed to cooperate with ICE. The Nazi Analogy That Failed: Governor Tim Walz scored a stinging rebuke from the Holocaust Museum for his outrageous Anne Frank comparison. Our friends on the left seem to have suddenly discovered the Second Amendment in light of Alex Pretti’s having been armed. Meanwhile, an appeals court blocked a judge’s limits on ICE tactics, giving the administration a win. Governor Walz contributes an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal. Summary: “Federal officials are lying. My state’s Corrections Department honors all immigration detainers.”
For the time being, the ICE protests in Minneapolis are grabbing all the ink and air, obscuring Minnesota’s massive welfare scandal. “Minnesota DHS Employee on Welfare Fraud: ‘This Is Real’” in City Journal reminds us. A snippet:
The reason I can confidently say that I could give a contract of this sort to my sister was because I had come across a contract that DHS had given to a former employee who had left the department within the past year. I immediately recognized her name, so I went to the person who initiated that contract and said, “What’s the deal with this? I want to make sure everything’s okay, that we don’t have a conflict.”
The person immediately went to our deputy director, who then came to me and said, “Why are you asking these questions?”
What’s happening regarding Iran? Will another valiant revolt against the mullahs’ bloody tyranny be defeated? Axios has an interesting story:
President Trump told Axios in an interview on Monday that the situation with Iran is “in flux” because he sent a “big armada” to the region but thinks Tehran genuinely wants to cut a deal.
Trump came close to ordering a strike on regime targets in Iran earlier this month over the killing of thousands of protesters. Instead he delayed the decision while also moving military assets to the region. White House officials say an attack is still on the table, though the protests have largely been suppressed.
Sources with knowledge of the situation say Trump hasn’t made a final decision. He will likely hold more consultations this week and be presented with additional military options.
Big Events in China: “As Generals Fall, Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Eating Itself” is a Foreign Policy headline. “With childhood friends and top leaders in the firing line, the system is frozen with fear,” notes the subhead. One of the Generals is accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the U.S. China’s rapid military buildup apparently fuels corruption. Wall Street Journal international affairs columnist Walter Russell Mead notes the decadence of China’s political system:
Louis XIV, Napoleon, imperial Germany, Hitler, Tojo and Stalin all had some good years. But time and again the poisonous isolation that absolute power imposes on its wielders blunted the edge of their insight and degraded the capacity of their societies.
The question haunting China today isn’t whether Zhang Youxia sold military secrets to the U.S. It is whether the Chinese Communist Party is falling prey to the authoritarian decadence that brought so many of its predecessors to ruin and defeat.
Speaking of decadence, how do you think Western feminism has been faring? The great Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks to Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill about contemporary feminism, highlighting the betrayal of the women of Iran. Dynamite. Wish I could quote every word. Just a teaser:
Brendan O’Neill: What is it about women that terrifies Islamist governments so much?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Our bodies. … … All this is far more pronounced in Islamist theology. There is this acute terror of female anatomy. ….
What is certainly not going through [western feminists’]minds is the victims. Victims of grooming gangs, victims of female genital mutilation, victims of Islamic regimes – the Western liberal feminist isn’t sparing a second thought for these girls.
I started to look back into what we call feminism in the modern era, which is really very different from those early narratives. Philosophers of the 18th century were thinking maybe it was time to send girls to school, to offer them higher education, perhaps give them the right to vote and treat them equally before the law.
But when I look at today’s feminism, all I see is a branch of the identity-based agenda, which women are being used to advance. The so-called feminists who are putting pussy hats on and protesting Donald Trump’s inauguration aren’t fighting for anything meaningful. …
An emancipated, truly liberated Iran is not in the interest of the people who call themselves ‘progressives’. Iranians want a functioning economy that’s based on a growing market economy – a capitalist model. They’d like to work with Israel, America and other Western countries. They’re fighting for individual rights.
A bookend to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s interview is “Perfect Storm” author Sebastian Junger‘s “How Democrats Lost Men” at The Free Press. “When men no longer feel honored, they’re more prone to embrace the far-right narrative of self-victimization,” Junger argues.
