Michigan Shenanigans. Scorched-Earth Slotkin. Slick Abdul. Was JFK’s Catholicism Just Like the Muslim Brotherhood? Why France’s Generation Gap Is Different. A Democrat Is Embracing School Choice. More
Is Michigan turning out to be just about the most fascinating place on the political map of the United States right now, or what?
First there’s Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin. Possibly inadvertently, Senator Slotkin gave us a chilling preview of coming attractions. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal is headlined “Slotkin Promises Endless Lawfare”:
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin presents herself as a moderate Democrat, but there’s nothing moderate about her warning to students last week not to work for the Trump Administration. Do so at your peril, she said, because you might end up in legal trouble.
“I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun, I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,” she said at a University of Chicago forum last week. “I want that deterrence message.”
Deterring public service: Now there’s an inspiring message to a young person about American self-government.
… But Ms. Slotkin is going further, essentially promising a scorched-earth lawfare campaign that goes after all and sundry, including what she calls “people who enabled” Mr. Trump. Apparently, she means even 20-something minions who might think a job in politics or government is worth trying.
This is where the multiple prosecutions that Democrats unleashed against Mr. Trump in the Biden years are taking us.
A Washington Examiner headline bestows the moniker “Slick Abdul” on Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed for his fancy footwork when asked whether he or his family has ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, spawner of Hamas. Byron York writes in the Examiner about Slick Abdul’s viral encounter with a young man named Tommy Teapell who asked him about the alleged ties. It was “a reasonable question” but …
At that point the exchange had reached a place where el Sayed might have said something clear — something like, “OK, I disavow the Muslim Brotherhood” — or moved on to play games. He moved on to play games. “Have you disavowed them?” he asked Teepell. “I haven’t heard you disavow them yet.” …
The crowd began to make noise. Abdul was putting this Islamophobe in his place! … El Sayed then went on to deliver a sermon about John F. Kennedy’s statements on Catholicism during the 1960 presidential campaign — as if there were any equivalence between the Catholic Church and a U.S. government-designated terrorist organization.
… Instead [of simply answering the question] el Sayed took another step forward in his campaign to portray valid questions about his background and his associations as Islamophobia.
Teapell, it was discovered, is a former staffer for GOP Senator Josh Hawley, which—pace the MSM—has absolutely no bearing on why the question is valid. The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn writes about El-Sayed’s “rough homestretch.” Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama, who is to campaign in Michigan for El-Sayed, raised eyebrows by attacking the probe of Rep. Ilhan Omar (“Obama’s Disrespect for the Law“) and was criticized by Elisha Weisel (whose father was Elie Weisel) for “distortions” of Jewish history (“Obama’s Dangerous Mideast Words“). Omar Plot Thickens? Rep. Omar’s sister spoke recently and voluntarily with federal investigators. Powerline’s Michigan-based Omar watcher Scott Johnson has interesting observations on the alleged meaning of DNA evidence in the Omar case.
It’s the globalism, Stupid. “Why Democrats Won’t Stop Inflation” is the headline of a story by Justin H. Vassello at Unherd:
If a blue wave does sweep the nation, the Left will get to enjoy a bit of inflation schadenfreude…. Yet a rude awakening awaits those who imagine that ending the Iran war or booting the GOP from power will end the inflation crisis. For much of this decade, inflation has been a problem for consumers and firms, and a salient political issue for voters. And although policy choices like the Iran war have no doubt played a role, today’s structural inflation has a much deeper cause: it is the unintended price of voters’ choice to end the model of neoliberal globalization that defined the post-Cold War period.
Meanwhile, John Funds asks in National Review that, as in 1992, when Bill Clinton beat George H. W. Bush, “Once Again, Are We Being Sold a Distorted Economic View Just Before an Election?” Unherd’s juicy newsletter Undercurrents (sorry, I can’t link) reports on political strange bedfellows, including Judge Napolitano, who probably would vote for El-Sayed if he lived in Michigan. Victor Davis Hanson characterizes “The Deep Midterms” as “a fundamental choice over America’s economic future, national identity, immigration, energy, and Western civilization.”
The riots in France reportedly cooled last night after the imposition of targeted curfews. Walter Russell Mead writes of the riots as one example of a “generation conflagration” that is affecting other countries:
The French generational gap is different. As in growing numbers of countries today, France’s population is aging and projected to shrink, delaying the inevitable generational transfer of power. French boomers cling to the keys to the treasury, and it shows. …
The French generational gap is about more than age. Ethnically and culturally, French young people are more likely to have Islamic or immigrant backgrounds than older people. In 2024 the median age for French residents was 41.6 years. The median age for second-generation immigrants (with one or more immigrant parents) was estimated at around 25.
This mix of economic grievances that tend to unite young people in France and ethnic and religious tensions and alienation that affect some young people more than others helps explain the complex nature of France’s youth rebellion. Some protesters want to lobby city hall. Some want to burn it to the ground. Some don’t care much about city hall but enjoy looting stores and rioting in the streets.
This is bad news, but France’s problems aren’t only generational. Where young and old agree in France, they are generally both wrong. The best way to open opportunities for youth would be to slash taxes and dismantle restrictions on new housing, infrastructure, business, employment and almost everything else strangling the French economy with red tape.
Some of the Mead column bolsters President Trump’s contention that immigration is the main issue, as does Free Expression’s Matthew Hennessey, who writes that the “mobs burning Paris are an alliance of unemployed Muslim youth and unemployable communists.” Comme d’habitude, the Babylon Bee has the last word.
More International News. The White House reportedly has blocked the transfer of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, and President Trump is admonishing Ukraine’s President Zelensky to “remember our Oval Office fallout.” President Trump tells President Zelensky to “step aside” and make place for another negotiator. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin suggests a summit with Trump and China’s dictator Xi on the Iran conflict, which even the friendly New York Post compares to the disaster of Yalta. “Treason, no; moral obtuseness, yes,” assesses George Weigel.
A Democratic Convert to School Choice. Florida Representative and graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Jared Moskowitz is in favor of the federal tax-credit scholarship program that will help Jewish parents protect their children from antisemitism:
Security funding isn’t enough. Not every school is equally prepared to ensure safety amid rising antisemitism. When parents feel their child’s school is unsafe, they need to be able to find a different one where their child can learn without fear. Private Jewish day schools provide that environment, but financial circumstances prevent many families from enrolling their children in them.
I have always supported strong public schools, and I still do. But supporting public education and enhancing parents’ ability to seek a safe school for their child aren’t mutually exclusive.
America should be able to make every mother and father a simple promise: When you drop your kids off at school, you get to pick them up—no matter where you live, where your family prays or how much money you have. I urge blue-state leaders to opt in to the federal tax-credit scholarship program.
