Ukraine Rains on Putin’s ‘Victory’ Parade. Busy President Not Happy with Iran Offer. Who Is Spencer Pratt? Misplaced Empathy of Liberal Women Kills. And More
We’re in the throes of redistricting battles, debates over whether to eat the rich, and the mercurial state of foreign affairs.
The most astonishing development was Vladimir Putin’s saying, at a lackluster parade in Moscow, that the Ukraine war is “coming to an end.” Who knows? “Is Ukraine Winning Without U.S. Help?” asks The Free Press. That would be ideal, right?
A similar editorial in the Wall Street Journal asks, “Is Ukraine Turning the Russian Tide?” and suggests that Putin’s “shrinking victory parade signals Ukraine’s military advances.” Meanwhile, President Trump rejects Iran’s latest proposal. Busy week for the president, who goes to China this week for a summit with Xi, which an editorial in the Wall Street Journal describes as “high stakes.” “The U.S. wants ‘stability’ but China’s Communist leader has larger ambitions,” is the subtitle.
The Washington Post (news story) reports that Xi is “holding no illusions about making lasting deals at this week’s summit, China’s leader looks to project Beijing as an alternative to U.S. volatility on the world stage.” Yes, this story is more pro-Xi (who’s never wanted to make peace) than pro-the U.S. president.
The Wall Street Journal has a front-page story on Xi’s China: “Dazzling Technology, Military Muscle—and an Economic Mess.” It’s a bit more challenging for the legacy press to portray the U.S. as an economic mess after last week’s jobs report and the stock market’s dazzling performance (though I know they will rise to the challenge). Apropos of this, Tyler Cowen advises, “Trust the Markets, Not the Headlines.”
Well, now it’s time for some fun. “Spencer Pratt can win in Los Angeles. Here’s how,” the Examiner’s media columnist Joe Concha writes. Peter Savodenik of The Free Press has the same concern: Can Pratt, a former TV reality star, who is running for Mayor of Los Angeles, win? Savodenik’s lead is worth quoting:
At last week’s mayoral debate in Los Angeles, there were three competing visions of the city on offer. There’s Mayor Karen Bass’s Democratic theory of government, according to which things are pretty good. There’s City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s uber-progressivism, according to which the city is facing an affordability crisis that demands more “planning” and fewer cops. And then there’s former reality television star Spencer Pratt, and his rage against the machine.
Pratt, 42, grew up in the Pacific Palisades, which, once upon a time, was idyllic: beautiful Spanish revival and midcentury modern homes overlooking the ocean, pools and tennis courts, a very quaint “village” full of pricey boutiques. His father was a dentist; his mother didn’t work. He went to Crossroads, which was known as the hippy-dippy school for the children of famous actors and directors. (Jonah Hill was in his class.)
“Spencer Pratt Is Making Them Sweat in L.A.” is the headline on Kyle Smith’s WSJ “Free Expression” piece. Smith writes:
In politics, the candidate who tells the best story always has the best chance of winning.
Enter Spencer Pratt, the possible next mayor of Los Angeles. His story glows with righteous outrage: Los Angeles is wasting huge sums of money on ineffectual responses to homelessness and disorder, it has areas that are Disneyland for meth heads, and it horribly mismanaged both last year’s wildfires and the rebuilding effort….
Mr. Pratt, like Golden Tempo at the Kentucky Derby, is a notional no-hoper who appears to be coming up fast on the outside. In a bluntly emotional campaign spot featuring shots of Ms. Bass’s and Ms. Raman’s multimillion-dollar homes, Mr. Pratt cut to his own residence—a trailer—and noted with unsuppressed anger, in reference to the Palisades fire, “This is where I live. They let my home burn down. I know what the consequences of failed leadership are.” He titled the spot, “They not like us,” echoing the now-classic 2024 diss track by rapper Kendrick Lamar.
A union-funded, anti-Pratt advertisement backfired. A Spencer Pratt interview by CBS.
Virginia Democrats are so furious that the state Supreme Court ruled their redistricting plan is unconstitutional, that they’re ready to resort to gutting the court. GWU law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley explains:After the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the results of the recent Democratic effort to effectively wipe out Republican representation in the state, Democratic pundits and activists have latched onto a proposal by Michigan State law professor Quinn Yeargain to gut the court by forcing the retirement of the current justices, appointing liberal activists, and then reversing the opinion. It is extremely telling that some are pushing the raw muscle play to retake power in Washington, particularly in light of the calls to pack the United States Supreme Court once the party is back in control.
Professor Yeargain declared on Substack that there is “a simple – and lawful – solution: Send the entire court into early retirement.” Under this plan, Virginia Democrats would adopt an absurdly low age for retirement in a gut-and-pack scheme: Yeargain suggested that they could set “the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.”
Ms. Must promised that we would get to the debate over whether to eat the rich. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is currently the top proponent of eating the rich (of taxing them to Florida). Tasty as the rich might be (with a little rosemary and butter), Michael Goodwin argues that the Mayor’s policies are harmful to all the city. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is winning praise from unusual sources (City Journal and an editorial in the Wall Street Journal) for her decision to buck the education unions to opt in for federal scholarship credits.
Please Don’t Eat These Billionaires. “Billionaires to California’s Rescue” is the headline of an American Spectator article by Ken Khachigian, formerly a Ronald Reagan speechwriter. Here’s the subtitle:
Faced with punitive taxes and escalating hostility, America’s most successful entrepreneurs are beginning to challenge progressive dominance head-on.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine writes that the misplaced empathy of women is being weaponized by the Left, and that this makes the world more dangerous for us all:
A young liberal woman refused to cooperate with prosecutors after violent recidivist Rhamell Burke attacked her on the subway five weeks before he allegedly pushed a retired NYC teacher to his death on Thursday.
Now the 23-year-old woman has regrets.
“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail,” she told The Post.
Maybe if she had indulged in less self-congratulatory empathy for the maniac who allegedly tried to kill her and felt more compassion for her fellow New Yorkers left to the mercy of an out-of-control predator roaming the streets, Ross Falzone would still be alive.
Another twist on empathy. The U.S. job market is changing. A news story in the Wall Street Journal reports that the emerging job market skews against men:
The American labor market is tilting away from men….
As the needs of an aging population stack up, occupations that men have historically been loath to enter, such as jobs as home health aides and medical assistants, will likely play a bigger role in the labor market. A growing educational divide is also part of the equation: Women now earn bachelor’s degrees at a substantially higher rate than men, and employment rates among people who are college-educated are substantially higher than those who aren’t.
Two Classic Gentleman: Ms. Must can’t close without highly recommending City Journal’s printing of the new foreword for “Truth Teller” Theodore Dalrymple’s now 25-year-old classic, “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass,” and Peter Berkowitz’s on “Harvey C. Mansfield’s Honorable Quest to Educate Harvard,” at RCP.
Hope you had a nice Mother’s Day. Lots of ladies looking like they were being taken somewhere for a special treat after Mass in church yesterday. Pertinent to this is Caitlin Flanagan’s Free Press piece, which has this subtitle:
Everyone is arguing about whether to have children. Almost no one is talking about what you get when you do.
