President Trump Cancels Iran Strikes. El-Sayed and Stevens Race: Bellwether for Dems. James Carville: Won’t Be a Piker. NCAA’s Trojan Horse for Men in Women’s Sports. More
We’re back to jaw jaw instead of war war. For now now.
“Trump Pivots Back to Diplomacy as Iran Victory Eludes Him” is the Wall Street Journal headline:
After days of threats to launch a new offensive against Iran, President Trump is once again trying to achieve through diplomacy what he has yet to accomplish through war.
The question is whether Trump’s Gulf partners can make enough headway in the days ahead to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, at least temporarily, and lay the groundwork for eventual nuclear talks.
Axios on the “canceled attacks.” Oil prices fell more than 5% as Middle East tensions ebb on diplomatic efforts. However, an editorial (“Trump’s Latest Iran ‘DEAL’”) in the Wall Street Journal was merciless:
A friend quipped the other day that President Trump truly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because he has already ended the Iran war eight times. Will the ninth time be the charm after his latest decision to call off a military escalation in search of a deal with the revolutionary regime? …
Mr. Trump offered no other details. It also isn’t clear how this miraculous turn of events happened so quickly after Mr. Trump had been building all week to a military response. Journal reporters said Friday Mr. Trump had made a decision to escalate….
Iran also knows Mr. Trump is surrounded by advisers who didn’t want the President to attack Iran at all and now want the conflict over on nearly any available terms.
Visions of the fall of the Berlin Wall Dancing in Our Heads? An (overly?) optimistic report in the New York Post is headlined “Iranian revolution can happen ‘any day now’ as protest leaders try to arm: sources.” From the report:
The streets of Iran are near a breaking point over public executions, economic collapse and a war that’s been raging on for more than five months, anti-regime figures in Tehran told The Post.
“A revolution can happen any day now — people want revenge,” a protest leader said, referring to the regime’s brutal January crackdown that President Trump said killed 52,000 people.
An independent journalist active in the Iranian underground said that preparations are already being made for the next uprising, and that activists from all walks of life are determined to make a final, decisive blow against the regime.
On the other hand, Iran’s hardliners already have an abundance of sophisticated weapons.
The next few days will give us hints as to whether the socialists have taken over the Democratic Party. The bitter Democratic primary in Michigan will be a bellwether:
The battle between Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former local public-health official, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, encapsulates virtually everything dividing Democrats. There has been debate over who is to blame for 2024 election failures, the type of candidate best positioned to beat Republicans in November, the role of corporate and big-dollar campaign money, and the U.S. relationship with Israel.
The rise of El-Sayed “exposes Democrats’ moral morass,” according to Isaac Schorr:
The Democrats’ bloody civil war isn’t about health care, or immigration, or LGBT issues, or marginal tax rates.
It’s about two irreconcilable worldviews: one that celebrates the United States as exceptionally commendable, and the other that scorns it as exceptionally reprehensible — often using Israel as a proxy.
Haley Stevens will be hoping a traditional Dem voting block can rescue her. “The Black Voters Who Could Decide the Country’s Biggest Democratic Primary” is the headline on a Free Press story by Olivia Reingold.
El-Sayed is a proponent of Medicare for all (his psychiatrist wife does not take Medicare but no doubt will once the socialist utopia is established). Wall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley addresses El-Sayed’s plans in a column headlined “Socialist Chic and the ‘Medicare for All’ Sham.”
“What Abdul El-Sayed proposes is a single-payer system nothing like the program for the elderly,” Finley argues. Finley writes:
Mr. El-Sayed’s idealized system resembles Medicaid, in which patients can wait months to see specialists. In single-payer systems in other countries where the government rations care, wait times are even worse. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine recently reported 15,860 avoidable deaths last year associated with long delays for Britain’s National Health Service.
Will James Carville become a bellwether? The Ragin’ Cajun vows to leave the Democratic Party if Hasan Piker becomes its face. Piker, the apparent Mao fan who has campaigned with El-Sayed, is already a force to be reckoned with on the Democratic left. In the event of an irrefutable DSA rise to power, will Carville make good on his threat or will he be a piker?
What do socialists not understand? Wealth creation, answers John Steele Gordon in “A Brief History of Wealth Creation” in the Wall Street Journal. Borders are another thing socialists don’t get. The Federalist argues that open-border policy was a form of hybrid warfare against the American people.
It’s not just the Odyssey that features a Trojan horse. All American tennis champ Kim Jones writes about the ruse apparently employed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to promote the Protect College Sports Act:
What the NCAA and its lobbyists aren’t telling anyone is that the PCSA is a Trojan horse for men in women’s college sports.
The NCAA violated Title IX by making Lia (né William) Thomas, CeCé Telfer, Blaire Fleming, Sadie Schreiner and other men eligible to win NCAA women’s titles and awards, join women’s teams, and enter women’s locker rooms. In response to these violations of federal law, my organization, the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, is financially supporting three federal lawsuits filed in 2024 and 2025 against the NCAA and its member conferences and schools on behalf of dozens of female athletes, including Riley Gaines and Brooke Slusser, as well as female Olympians and American record holders.
The PCSA’s overly broad exemption would short-circuit these lawsuits and halt efforts to hold the NCAA accountable under Title IX. By exempting all NCAA eligibility decisions, the bill would shield the NCAA from liability for past and future eligibility decisions that violate Title IX.
Given the NCAA’s longstanding and defiant disregard for the rights of female athletes, it isn’t surprising that the association’s lobbyists have slipped into the PCSA an overly broad exemption from federal law, authorizing the NCAA to harm countless female college athletes—past, current and future.
Women Who Make the World Better. Riley Gaines says Target Center staffer tried to shut down her Sophie Cunningham sign. Here is what happened:
Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve was permitted to wear a “Trans kids belong” shirt on the sideline during Sunday’s game against the Indiana Fever.
Fans throughout Target Center held signs supporting their favorite WNBA players.
According to Gaines, the staffer told her the problem was that the sign contained Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s name.
“I checked all the sign policies before I went in there,” Gaines told OutKick. “I made sure it was like 11 by 17. That’s the sign size you could have. So, I got a ruler out. You better believe I was measuring it.”
But when Riley Gaines displayed a small sign reading, “Sophie, thank you — a girl mom,” an arena staffer tried to make her put it down.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s attempt to rival Vito Genovese in the Senate Committee hearing on the origin of Covid was the gruesome but riveting spectacle of last week. Highly recommended: Matt Ridley’s “Fauci and the great Covid Cover-up” at Spiked Online and Roger Kimball’s “The Rise and Fall of Anthony Fauci” at American Greatness.
Also highly recommended: “Europe’s Borderless Dream Becomes a Nightmare,” by Douglas Murray, who warned that this would happen long before Ceuta:
The West has sleepwalked into mass migration for more than a decade. Will a glaring breach of its borders jar it awake?
Under Ms. Must’s Better Late than Never rubric, I would be remiss if I did not mention Matthew Continetti’s excellent Friday column on Milton Friedman.
One for the Road. An edifying and fun-filled tableau of HHS Secretary RFK Jr. sparring with CNN’s Dana Bash (here, here, and here). …
