Heroes Foil Hijacking. Israeli Plumber One of the Valiant. Legacy of Flight 93 Hailed. U.S. Economy Takes Off. But Is It Too Late for Midterms? Miranda Devine on Cornell 7. And More

We’re going to hear the word hero a lot today.

And thank heavens for the “Heroes in the Sky,” who foiled the attempted hijacking of a Dubai airplane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, saving the lives of 174 passengers.     

This, from Jonathan Sacerdoti of the London Spectator:

The heroes who saved the flydubai flight from disaster a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv appears to have been hijacked by its own co-pilot. It ended with the plane on the ground in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and all 174 passengers alive, among them 27 children and many Israelis. Very little has been officially confirmed. But what we do know points to a potentially massive disaster that was averted, thanks to the bravery of Israeli passengers and members of the crew. …

If the early indications are right, this morning a pilot tried to turn a passenger jet into a weapon on a route that stands for that new relationship. He was stopped by ordinary passengers who ran toward the danger instead of away from it, and by a crew who happened to be in the right place at the right time. We came very close to a very different headline today.

The grievously wounded captain managed to open the cockpit so passengers could swarm in and subdue the treacherous co-pilot. The Wall Street Journal reports on the cockpit stabbing and terrifying nosedive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credits an Israeli plumber for “preventing another 9/11.” Passengers further recalled the plane’s drastic, stomach-churning plunge. The Free Press profiles one of the heroes in “‘I Ran Toward the Cockpit’: An Exclusive Interview with the Israeli Dad Who Stopped a Hijacking.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal ties this to the legacy of the “spirit” of Flight 93 25 years ago in September 11:

The threat from Islamic terrorism isn’t over. But on their way home to Israel at last, survivors of the hijacking could be seen on video breaking into an old Jewish song: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge / and the main thing—is to have no fear at all.”

Don’t miss “The Hero Who Stopped Israel’s 9/11” in the U.K. Telegraph.

“The U.S. Economy Is Accelerating” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. The editors write:

You’d be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is slouching toward recession based on the gloomy headlines. But cheer up—the Commerce Department on Wednesday made an unusually large upward revision in its economic growth estimate for the first half of the year. Might rising yields on the 10-year Treasury reflect accelerating economic growth? …

The larger story here is that the economy as a whole looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years when growth was driven by government handouts. Recall how the Biden team boasted that its climate spending was increasing construction and even defended its endless student loan forbearance as propping up consumer spending.

Mark Skousen writes that gross output signals an economic surge. In his Best-of-the-Web column, James Freeman observes that the U.S. economy is better than was previously reported. I know what you’re thinking. Does any of this help Republicans, or are the midterm results already baked into the pie? Victor Davis Hanson had a piece recently about what he called the “false gloom” about the economy that defeated George H.W. Bush and elected Bill Clinton.

Karl Rove’s column this morning does not radiate hope for the GOP’s electoral prospects. Headlined “A Blundering 2026 Midterm Campaign,” the column suggests that the Republican campaign strategy looks good on paper but suffers from subpar execution:

Messaging is one of the few areas of Team Trump’s execution we can judge in real time. The past month it’s been awful.

Especially given Mr. Trump’s poor approval numbers, he has to drive home each day what the GOP has accomplished and will accomplish—and clearly contrast that with what Democrats believe and promise. Instead, we’ve gotten off-putting confusion.

“How many House seats will the Democrats win? The polls may already know,” is Henry Olsen’s Washington Post headline. Olsen writes:

This week, I set about reverse engineering the past three midterms using generic congressional ballot polling. I expected the analysis to be fruitful, but even I was surprised by just how predictive it turned out to be. Applying the same model to the election before us renders this verdict: a Democratic majority of at least 225 seats and as many as 232.

So many commentators are off and running. We should wait for more information in the complicated case of the Cornell rape accusations. “The lynch mob is out for the ‘Cornell 7’ — proving we’ve learned nothing from past injustices,” Miranda Devine cautions. She writes:

The “Cornell 7” gang rape case is descending into the same lynch-mob hysteria as the notorious Duke lacrosse or “mattress girl” hoaxes of old — only with social media making ­everything worse. 

It seems we have learned nothing from past injustices. 

A young woman who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell University, where she was a student at the time. 

Predictably, the fraternity brothers have been judged guilty in the court of man-hating public opinion. 

Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to stop, they did. 

In “The Moral Wilderness of the Cornell Seven Case,” National Review’s Dan McLaughlin writes:

Moral panics are not always bad. Sometimes, they represent an overdue societal correction against some entrenched injustice. But they are always dangerous, and we should always have a clear head about the fact that we are in one. So it is with the “Cornell Seven” case. …

“Jane Doe,” the thus-far anonymous alleged victim, now says that she was raped on October 19–20, 2024, by seven members of the same fraternity at Cornell, where she was a 20-year-old junior. The central issue in every rape case has to be this one: Did he do it? The surrounding facts may show aggravating or mitigating factors; they may or may not tell us bad things about the victim or other possible accomplices or bystanders. But the essential question has to come first: Did he rape her? If so, he’s a violent criminal and should be treated by the law and society like any other predatory felon. If not, we’re not dealing with a rape.

Of course, a non-rape can still be many sorts of morally dreadful behavior, but it doesn’t become rape just by the application of hot rhetoric. Sadly, after decades of assaults by progressives and feminists on traditional moral frameworks and rules, we don’t really have a coherent language to deal with immoral sexual behavior that doesn’t cross the line into crime. We’d be in a better place if we had those sorts of standards. It’s hard to teach your sons, or your daughters for that matter, moral rules if you treat the whole idea of moral rules with contempt.

Dangerous Women. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich is warning parents about the radical content of Ms. Rachel’s kiddie shows. “Not Mr. Rogers,” says Descovich. … The “‘Palestinian Rachel Dolezal’ Scandal Isn’t What You Think.” Take her and what she represents seriously, says City Journal.