Who’ll Be Sitting Across from J.D. This Weekend in Pakistan? First Lady’s Surprise Statement. Cop Gets Three to Six Years for Crime of Doing His Job. What Will Fertility Crisis Mean for YOU?
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.”
