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Issue: Crime

Dick Cheney, RIP. Election 2025 Is Here! New York Mayor’s Race: Trump Makes a Choice. Tariffs Tomorrow. More Young Americans Okay with Violence. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

This Just In: Former Vice President Dick Cheney, has died at the age of 84. The New York Times obituary is here. The Washington Post remembers the former Vice President here, and the New York Post has wire stories.

Back to Regularly Scheduled Programing. Election Day 2025—exciting, nerve-racking and defining.

President Trump looms large over key races despite not being on the ballot:

 Grabbing top billing are New Jersey and Virginia, the only two states to hold contests for governor in the year after a presidential election. Their gubernatorial races typically receive outsized national attention and are seen as a key barometer ahead of next year’s midterms, when the GOP will be defending its slim House and Senate majorities.

We will probably go to bed tonight knowing whether New York, the (for now) throbbing heart of capitalism, will elect a socialist mayor. A new bombshell poll has socialist Zohran Mamdani and former Governor Andrew Cuomo neck and neck.  

President Trump made his choice clear:

President Trump made his most overt endorsement yet of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race — saying that New Yorkers “must vote for” the disgraced former governor to defeat “Communist” Zohran Mamdani.

“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“He [Cuomo] is capable of it, Mamdani is not!” Trump added. AEI’s Danielle Pletka writes that the election of Mamdani, who recently stood in solidarity with a terrorist-friendly Imam, means New York has forgotten its history. If Kansas City’s erstwhile free buses are an indication, Mamdani’s free buses would also lead to a degradation of the experience of riders. Also predicted, because of Mamdani’s push to decriminalize prostitution, AOC’s “red light district” crisis could engulf New York. But is the argument stacked against capitalism?

Meanwhile, in New Jersey GOP candidate for Governor Jack Ciattarelli got an endorsement from former Governor Thomas Kean, who has largely avoided politics:

“I haven’t been involved in partisan politics for a number of years, but this year is different,” Kean said in a video shared by Ciattarelli on X. “New Jersey needs a change and needs a change badly. Jack Ciattarelli is that change.”

Former President Barack Obama’s last-minute efforts on behalf of Rep. Mikie Sherrill, Democratic candidate for New Jersey Governor, left one black leader unimpressed. Former President Obama also dabbled in the New York Mayor’s race, offering to be a sounding board for Mamdani, but not quite endorsing him. James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal refers to “Obama’s Self-Serving Straddle with Mamdani.” Good News for Political Junkies: The New York Post and 2Way team up to provide coverage for this excruciating evening. There is hope on Capitol Hill that the elections will help end the shutdown.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow over whether President Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs are legal. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which has been consistently opposed to the tariffs, is headlined “The Tariff King and the Supreme Court.” For the editors, the question is whether the Justices stop Trump from usurping Congress’s power over taxes and tariffs:

The Trump Administration tries to leapfrog all of these statutory obstacles by citing the President’s Article II foreign-policy authority. Few conservatives are more deferential to presidential overseas authority than we are. But the power of the purse still belongs to Congress and can’t simply be wished away with the words “foreign policy.” Tariffs are taxes on Americans.

If the Court blesses this unlimited presidential tariff power, future Presidents will be able to cite emergencies to justify tariffs to pursue all kinds of policy goals. An all-too-likely example is a climate emergency to tax imports of countries with high CO2 emissions.

President Trump calls the tariffs case “[t]he most important case ever.” A ruling against tariffs could trigger a chaotic economic situation. “It really feels like this is a coin flip in terms of the outcome,” Heritage Foundation Chief Economist E.J. Antoni told The Federalist. 

Who You Callin’ Isolationist. Wall Street Journal international affairs columnist Walter Russell Mead says it’s wrong to regard President Trump as an isolationist—he’s out to reshape the globe:

Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are larger than Saudi Arabia’s. Flipping Venezuela from the Axis of Revisionists to Team America would have lasting consequences on the global balance of power—and would reduce the ability of countries like Russia and Iran to use energy as a weapon against the U.S.

Those who still think of Mr. Trump as a restrainer or isolationist should watch his “60 Minutes” interview. This president isn’t retreating from the world. He aims to reshape it.

What other American President would threaten to go in “arms blazing” because of persecution and murder of Nigeria’s Christians? An editorial in the Wall Street Journal takes note:

The plight of Africa’s Christians seems like a world away from America First policy. But U.S. moral interests include humanitarian concerns, and in this case they coincide with the fight against radical Islam. Credit to Mr. Trump for showing he understands and may be willing to act on those interests.

Have you heard that some administration people have been moved to military housing for protection? It’s true. Adviser Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in military housing. The Atlantic and the New York Times had stories saying it was their own fault. The Federalist responds:

It’s just so baffling, they continue, because Obama Defense Secretaries Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel “felt secure in their homes” when they were in office. What could possibly be different for Trump officials? If Panetta wasn’t scared of Tea Party grandmas, surely the Millers can shrug off the threat of antifa mobs and leftists like Virginia Democrat Jay Jones calling for the murder of Republicans?

Maybe this is a good place to cite a Daily Caller story on the growing number of young Americans who believe violence to be justified:

The poll found that 24% of Americans say there are circumstances in which political violence can be justified, compared to 64% who say it is never acceptable, according to Politico’s report on the survey. Among younger adults, that number rises sharply, with more than one in three under the age of 45 agreeing there are circumstances where political violence is warranted. There was “little partisan divide” on the issue, according to Politico, though neither the precise breakdown on the numbers nor the phrasing of the questions were included in the report. The findings come amid a surge of politically motivated attacks and threats in recent months.

Fascinating Ideas. “Taking Hostages Turned Out to Be Hamas’s Undoing.”  Microchips are so yesterday—the future is wafers, according to the visionary George Gilder. Wall Street Journalist columnist Gerard Baker says that Mamdani is a gift, but President Trump should be careful how he opens it. And the great Joel Kotkin boils down message of lefty Mayors to the cities they supposedly govern: Drop dead. Kotkin writes:

“The progressives are not focused on governance,” he suggested over sushi in Little Tokyo, a stone’s throw from City Hall. “They prefer virtue-signaling to running a city.” Cole’s is not the complaint of a conservative but someone who identifies as “a pragmatic progressive,” even a “sewer socialist.” The problem, he says, is that today’s progressives lack a “results-oriented approach” that actually helps residents.

Perhaps never in recent history have American cities so badly needed strong, pragmatic mayors—and gotten so few. ….

Cities cannot afford such choices. 

We’ll know soon whether New York has made such a choice.

ICE Dallas Shooting: Let the Liberal Gaslighting Begin. Rumors of War. Pregnant Women Post Videos of Themselves Taking Tylenol. And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

“Left Hate Leads to Murder” screams the New York Post front-page headline. Pictured is pudgy Joshua Jahn, 29, who shot up an ICE facility before turning the gun on himself.

Jahn appeared to be targeting ICE agents, but he hit illegal aliens being detained by ICE instead, killing one and injuring two others. Time magazine describes Jahn, who appears to be of Norwegian heritage, as a former Boy Scout with a “drug-related criminal history.” Jain’s sis shares his criminal past.

Jain’s mother had posted anti-gun rants aimed at Republican lawmakers a few days before the shooting. Sharon Jahn posted:

“Governor Abbott, Senator Cornyn and Senator Cruz how does it make you feel that your action to open up gun laws is responsible for the killing of 21 more people?” the anti-ICE gunman’s mother wrote in a May 25, 2022 post.

It’s not unfair to ask: How do you feel now, Mrs. Jahn?

The New York Times complains that there is “a rush to score political points before the facts are in.”  The MSM is clinging to Jahn’s having registered to vote as an independent. His political opinions are said to be shrouded in mystery, despite the blatant and unmistakable anti-ICE slogans on his bullets. C’mon, you’re not fooling anybody, probably not even yourselves. Townhall’s Matt Vespa writes:

This will be another test to determine whether the legacy media’s power is truly waning. I think it is—they can no longer control narratives. The ones they trot out to distract us are easily dismissed as bunk. Still, we had another politically motivated attack in Texas yesterday, where Joshua Jahn, 29, opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, killing two detainees and injuring another before he committed suicide. No, he was not a right-winger. He was targeting federal vehicles. Jahn also had anti-ICE messaging on the ammunition. 

National Review’s Jim Geraghty calls this latest shooting “another case of left-wing violence.” Jeffrey Blehar of the same outlet notes:

The gaslighting has already begun, incidentally. The denizens of Bluesky, America’s self-imposed social media leper colony, are currently going through the exact same cycle of denial and conspiratorial thinking that they did with Charlie Kirk, except this time they’ve had practice so they’re speedrunning it like Twitch streamers. “Nobody writes ANTI-ICE on a bullet, do you really trust a liar like Kash Patel?” “Maybe he was trying to kill the detainees!” “It’s too early to speculate about motive!”

An editorial in the New York Post argues that Democrats’ “Nazi rhetoric” about ICE inspired this shooting. Don’t miss California Governor Gavin Newsom on “masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, people disappearing.” If you are counting, it’s been two weeks and one day since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Georgetown University is being papered with “Hey, Fascist” fliers urging students to resurrect the bloody legacy of lunatic John Brown. The group brags they are “the only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.” Hey, fascist was etched on a bullet by the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Another Rave Review Is In: Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York calls President Trump’s United Nations address Tuesday “epic.” He reprints the entire speech, and it is well worth reading. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal asks if there is a “new start” for Trump on Ukraine, adding that “harder rhetoric will have to be followed by a much harder policy toward Russia.”

President Trump’s UN speech was delivered in an atmosphere of rumors of war. “I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready” is the headline in Niall Ferguson’s latest Free Press piece. “Hundreds of drones buzzing overhead like lethal hornets, watching with unblinking eyes for targets, others descending for the kill. Soon there will be thousands,” Ferguson alarmingly argues.

We appear to be on the cusp of a government shutdown. The American Spectator says a shutdown can’t come a minute too soon, while Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal column is devoted to which party will be blamed. “The only certainty is that public trust in Washington isn’t about to improve,” Rove’s subhead. But isn’t skepticism about Washington a Good Thing?

Apropos of that question, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel observes, “The sheer number of Washington’s political probes raises a question: Can D.C. do anything beyond investigations anymore?”

If we’re binging on Washington headlines, why not binge on the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, too? Barton Swaim has an excellent piece on Trump’s crackdown on crime in D.C. Swaim writes:

I was there again in early September. At every stop guardsmen were on patrol. They weren’t doing much of anything, but plainly their presence deterred the hooligans, nuisances and crazy people who can make the Metro unpleasant. The city’s government, too, had made itself more visible than I’ve ever seen—Metro Transit Police officers below ground, Metropolitan Police Department patrol cars above.

I took the Metro from Northwest to the decidedly down-market Hill East neighborhood, my destination a superb gluten-free bakery called, in a nice irony, Sweet Crimes. The place is a few blocks from the Potomac Avenue Metro stop. In February, the stop’s entrance was peopled by vagrants, one of whom shouted at no one. This time, the vagrants were either gone or peaceable, the grounds cleared of the needles and other garbage I’d seen before. Five guardsmen stood nearby….

The cost may be worth it in the long term. Mr. Trump, in his own unruly way, is reminding American city-dwellers and their elected leaders of a simple principle they forgot over the last 15 years: that the visible presence of authority does more to prevent crime than any social program or economic-development project. The president has said repeatedly that he may send troops to Chicago or Memphis on a similar mission—a legally more complicated move than taking control of the federal District of Columbia. I don’t think he’ll have to.

Hollywood Discovers the Virtue of Free Speech. “Better late than never. Now that the celebs have defended Jimmy Kimmel, how about Alex Berenson?” ask the Editors of The Free Press.

On Merit, Both Harris and Buttigieg Were Failures. Thus spake Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the Maria Bartiromo show.

Fertility Declines Are a Cultural Problem. Josh Appel makes this case at City Journal. Further Study: P.D. James explored infertility in her amazing book, “The Children of Men,” which begins in a time when no child has been born for 25 years. I avoided it for years because I thought it had a lot of science fiction.  It doesn’t, and it’s incredibly powerful.

Google is saying that, yes, the Biden administration did pressure them to censor:

Crucially, it turns out many of those banned had never actually broken the rules: The company simply folded, silencing even perfectly true speech, because the Biden crew demanded it, and “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”

“Misinformation,” once again, simply meaning info (right, wrong or mixed) that the people in power didn’t approve of.

Former FBI Director and Seashell Collector James Comey is expected to be indicted soon in a Virginia Court.

We’ll Show Him: Pregnant women are posting videos of themselves taking Tylenol to defy the Trump administration’s warning about Tylenol and pregnancy. No word yet on how pregnant men are responding to the administration’s caution.

Christopher Rufo had an interesting piece in City Journal yesterday on “radical normie terrorism.” Why are Middle American families producing monsters?” Rufo asks, suggesting that assassins come from perfectly normal families. He writes:

These acts of terror reflect something dark in our nation’s soul. The perpetrators were so dissatisfied with their middle-class lives that they sought to destroy the highest symbols of their society: murdering children in church pews, an attack on God; and murdering a political speaker in cold blood, an attack on the republic.

But are the majority of these monsters from normal families who are connected to normal cultural, civic, and religious customs? And that, I submit, is the “something dark” in our nation’s soul.

Remembering Charlie. The Amazing Erika Kirk. Will There Be a Government Shutdown? Flabby Young Minds. Lowry: Roots of ‘Trans’ Fanaticism. More …

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

The huge memorial service for Charlie Kirk yesterday at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, was like nothing we’ve ever seen. Except that it was very much in line with our best traditions.

It was like a revival. It was a revival. Indeed, Glenn Reynolds in his Substack post calls the gathering “a New Great Awakening.” Reynolds quotes several great tweets highlighting this. More tepidly, the New York Times commented that Kirk’s life “fused” politics and religion, which certainly was reflected in the memorial.

For those of us who’re still trying to forgive somebody who hurt our feelings back in high school, this was the moment that said it all:

Erika Kirk revealed that she forgives the man who killed her husband Charlie and preached unity and peace in a stunning, searing speech that left mourners speechless and crying on Sunday.

“He wanted to save young men. Just like the one who took his life,” Kirk’s widow said through tears, speaking behind the presidential seal on stage at State Farm Stadium.

She added: “I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And what Charlie would do.”

I was surprised at how explicitly religious Don Trump Jr.’s remarks were. He talked about the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. Not what I expected of Don Jr. The theme that Kirk died a martyr was sounded by many speakers, including President Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks were “the perfect blend of humor and heart.” Curmudgeon Stephen Kruiser found the memorial “a hope-filled clarion call.”

Kirk’s defense of freedom of speech was remarked upon repeatedly. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine celebrated Charlie Kirk’s grace and courage. Erika Kirk revealed the words from Second Lady Usha Vance (“that precious woman”?) that helped her survive the initial shock. But Charlie Kirk was not the only target, Yuval Levin writes:

That political order, the liberal-democratic republic we have inherited from prior generations of Americans and are privileged to enjoy and obliged to pass along in decent shape to our children, has been so successful that we now routinely take its benefits for granted….

But Charlie Kirk’s murderer showed us what real-world alternatives would actually look like. Our political order has been so successful that we too easily forget what it arose to prevent and replace. In this world, and especially in the morally diverse mass societies of the modern West, the only serious alternative to some kind of classically liberal politics is violence.

Needless to say, this is not good news. It means our range of options is more constrained than we would like, and maybe also that it is more constrained than the alternatives available to prior generations in other civilizations. The liberal society — that is, a society organized to safeguard equal rights and limit the powers of both governments and majorities through institutions of law and consent — has never been best understood as a utopian proposition.

Regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Peter Savrodnik interviews Utah Governor Spencer Cox at The Free Press. They talk about “the future of the right, the state of the left, and ‘the God-shaped hole in our hearts.’ “

A New York Post editorial describes the memorial as a message to the mass media, and Satan is reported to be having a bad day, too.

We’re facing a government shutdown. Again. But it’s okay this time because, if it happens, it’s the Dems forcing the shutdown, according to Politico. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is introducing a bill that he says in a Wall Street Journal op-ed would end government shutdowns forever. Johnson’s bill would convert to multiyear spending cycles.

With another shutdown looming, I’ve introduced an even simpler bill, the Eliminate Shutdowns Act, that could end the drama and uncertainty of Congress’s budgetary dysfunction. Some argued the 2019 bill would lead to higher spending and prohibit consideration of other measures until appropriations bills were passed. Those were legitimate concerns. My new bill simply provides for automatic two-week rolling continuing resolutions for any department for which an appropriation bill or longer-term continuing resolution hasn’t been passed. This would keep spending flat by prorating the previous year’s spending level.

This simple bill could be a game changer. With government funding and functioning assured, Congress would no longer have to spend weeks and months arguing over how to keep government departments open after failing to pass appropriation bills. Appropriations for individual departments would no longer be held hostage until a deal is done for all.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal praises Senator Ted Cruz for what it calls his “finest hour.” Cruz came down on FCC Chair Brendan Carr for his remarks about ABC and Jimmy Kimmel. Meanwhile, National Review’s John Fund has another idea: the FCC is a New Deal relic that should be abolished.

The “Gen Z Stare” is the result of overindulgence in social media, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley, in a column headlined “How Social Media Creates Flabby Young Brains“:

“The most common meaning is a vacant expression a Gen Zer gives in response to a question,” a NBC report explained. “The stare occurs in classrooms, restaurants, at work and more settings.” Psychologists attribute the dazed look to excessive screen time stunting the development of social skills, which was exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns.

Many digital natives exhibit autistic traits like difficulty reading social cues and communicating. This isn’t to say that social media or videogames cause autism. But they may give rise to behaviors that are associated with the disorder and fuel a sense among parents that something isn’t right with kids these days….

Is it any surprise that performance on standardized tests has fallen over the past decade as kids spend more time online? Or that many Generation Z members behave like zombies?

States are experimenting with regulations to curb adolescent digital addictions, but the problem defies a pat government solution. And it requires cultural introspection. When kids see adults scrolling their phones at all hours of the day, they begin to think this is normal and acceptable behavior. It isn’t.

The UN Security Council meets tomorrow to discuss the Middle East. The meeting is scheduled when Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah is in full swing; “The move is meant to sideline Israeli officials who will be observing the holiday,” sources tell The Free Beacon. Meanwhile, over the weekend, a 23-year-old spouting pro-Palestine gibberish shot his way into a country club wedding reception, killing one and injuring others. A wedding reception?

Shortly after Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended by ABC bigwigs, somebody fired on an ABC affiliate. Townhall’s Matt Vespa says there’s a reason this story was buried:

You’re not going to hear about it, especially after the suspect has been identified. His name is Anibal Hernandez Santana. So, not a white guy. The kicker is he’s also vehemently anti-Trump.

Here is another kind of violence the Left is inclined to censor: “transgender” violence. Breccan Thies writes in The Federalist that it is becoming a national emergency. Fascinating information on Nicholas Roske, now Sophie, who tried to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Like the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder, he used the notorious Discord platform. National Review’s Rich Lowry addresses “the roots of transgender fanaticism,” asking, “Why is the trans cause advanced with such fever and hate?”

First of all, the people who have “transitioned” have poured a massive amount of emotional and financial investment into their choice, and there is no going back. The last thing that they want to hear — from anyone — is that it is all a fraud, that they’ve wasted all that psychic energy and money, that they’ve harmed themselves via hormones or surgery for no reason.

It would be like talking to “anti-racist” advocates who, on top of their poisonous views about American society, have gone to great lengths to make themselves black but harbor doubts that they really are.

The level of delusion involved in the trans cause, meanwhile, requires pushing on all fronts to get every claim of the trans advocates accepted and to squash all dissent. If there’s one crack in the edifice, it discredits the entire enterprise.

The Courage of Erika Kirk. Look: We Gotta Talk about ‘Trans’ Ideology. Comrade Kathy Hochul Endorses. Abrams: Two-State Solution Dead. Plus, More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

We’ve been uplifted in our own sadness by the courage of Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, who vows that her husband’s movement, which gave a voice to young people who wanted to rebel against woke orthodoxy and had heretofore been isolated, will go on.

Mark Halperin of the popular platform 2Way was genuinely surprised that the Left tries to ignore Erika Kirk’s powerful words:

CNN and MSNBC are not taking the remarks of Erika Kirk live??? It takes a lot to surprise me. This is shocking. The BBC is taking it live!

We weren’t surprised, were we? That’s not the only aspect of Charlie Kirk’s assassination they don’t want us to see. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe tried to spread a rumor that Robinson is MAGA and is trying to ensure that the Left is blamed.

Indeed, the Drudge Report is straining mightily to emphasize the conservative family ties of Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. But get real. The New York Post’s more clear-eyed Miranda Devine writes:

It wasn’t until Utah Gov. Spencer Cox spelled out the transgender links to the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination that The New York Times and the rest of the Hate Media and their social media offshoots finally gave up the absurd nudge-nudge wink-wink pretense that the killer was its favorite type of villain, a MAGA gun nut.

Nope, Tyler Robinson, 22, turns out to be a hard-core leftist, Antifa devotee and Kirk-hater who was living with his transgender boyfriend, identified as Lance Twiggs, 22, who claimed, “We are riding with Biden” in a 2022 post on the social media platform Reddit.

The two men also reportedly shared a sexual fetish for “furries,” anthropomorphic animal characters, with Twiggs pictured in photos online wearing animal headdress.

Just to be clear: We aren’t demonizing people who are sexually confused and sold a bill of goods that they can solve their problems by becoming the other sex. In many instances, such young people are more sinned against than sinning (e.g., by docs who make a good living mutilating them). But it’s time to face reality. Former President Biden and the Biden FBI tried to suppress the writings of the child-murdering young woman in Nashville, who identified as a male. The Federalist published excerpts six days ago. The Nashville school shooting took place in March 2023.

The bullets of the alleged Kirk assassin were engraved with “trans” slogans that might not have made sense to the rest of us. The alleged assassin is not cooperating with the investigation, but his “trans partner” is emerging as the investigation’s key source. Robinson was joking about the assassination before his arrest.

Many on the left are rejoicing at Charlie’s death. Roger Severino takes note of the disgusting reaction of the president of the Oxford Union, one of the world’s most famous debating societies. The New Republic begs readers not to “fall into the empathy trap.” That should be an easy assignment for TNR’s current crop of readers. The new hit parade on the left isn’t about popular songs. Can this really be true?

The Wall Street Journal’s Alyssia Finley asks what made Tyler Robinson become violent in a column headlined “America’s Lost Boys.” Finley writes:

Marinating in an internet cesspool can’t be good for the young and malleable male mind. Might killing villains in videogames desensitize the conscience? Studies have found an association between playing violent videogames and aggressive behavior, though most people who assume online avatars and fight monsters don’t become violent.

A broader problem, as Jonathan Haidt explains in his book “The Anxious Generation,” is that videogames cause boys to get lost in cyberspace. They have “put some users into a vicious cycle because they used gaming to distract themselves from feelings of loneliness,” Mr. Haidt notes. “Over time they developed a reliance on the games instead of forming long-term friendships.” They “retreat to their bedrooms rather than doing the hard work of maturing in the real world.”

Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert writes in the same outlet about a phenomenon known as “splitting” and how it figures into Charlie Kirk’s murder. Heather Mac Donald writes about “An ideology Whose Logic Leads to Murder.” Here is the subhead:

It was grimly fitting that Charlie Kirk was slain on a college campus—source of the “hate speech equals violence” ethic that demonizes opponents and demands that they be silenced.

As usual, The Free Press has a passel of worthy responses. “Demand Nonviolence,” by Coleman Hughes, “Bury the Cliché ‘Words Are Violence,” by Greg Lukianoff, and “Repairing America After the Murder of Charlie Kirk,” by a bunch of good thinkers. One More Thing: Have you been seeing guillotine imagery lately? I know Portland lefties erected a guillotine. Josh Appel at City Journal urges us to consider why our Revolution was different from the French Revolution. Free Beacon Report: The FBI is investigating social media accounts that might have known about the assassination in advance of the act.

Comrade Kathy. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has endorsed antisemitic, radical socialist Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York. An editorial in the New York Post calls Hochul’s embrace of Mamdani’s “radical agenda” “spineless.” Hochul penned a New York Times Guest Essay on why she is endorsing Mamdani. Here’s more on Hochul’s stated reasons for endorsing Mamdani.

We’re expecting a Fed interest rate cut this week, but we don’t know how low it will go. Stephen Miran, White House economist and Trump Fed nominee (an editorial in the Wall Street Journal cautions Republican lawmakers that they should not bend to the president’s precedent-setting haste on Miran), will get a vote on the rate cut. Despite President Trump’s firing her, Fed member Lisa Cook will be there, too. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy analyzes where things stand with Cook.

Foreign affairs expert Elliott Abrams published an important piece in Mosaic with the headline “There Never Will Be a Palestinian State. So What’s Next?” Eliana Johnson follows this up with a must-read interview of Abrams at the Free Beacon on the same subject. Eliana’s father has been busy, too. Scott Johnson excerpts a Dartmouth College interview with alum Assistant AG for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon for Powerline.

Two from the American Spectator: Peter van Buren says that on immigration, President Trump is just enforcing the law. John Mac Glionnn argues that George Soros belongs in prison. And at Persuasion, Francis Fukuyama writes that Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and plutocracy in general threaten Western civilization. Try not to worry. Mr. Fukuyama’s most famous previous pronouncement was that history was ending. We all know how that worked out.

President Trump heads to the U.K. (which sentimentalists such as Ms. Must prefer to call England) for a state visit this week, his second, which has never happened before to an American president. It will have all the fixings.

We can hope that when future presidents welcome royals, they’ll love the new White House ballroom, which will be even bigger than anticipated.

The Emmys took place last night. There was one brilliant innovation:

Emmy Awards host Nate Bargatze shook up Sunday night’s ceremony—and created a cliffhanger comedy bit for the whole ceremony—by putting a financial penalty on long acceptance speeches. 

I did not watch, so I have no way to evaluate the Washington Post’s take on the best and worst moments. Here’s the hackneyed Emmys moment that surprised no one:

“Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder is under fire for turning her Emmy acceptance speech into a crude, political soapbox in which she said, “F—k ICE and free Palestine.”

The actress’ controversial remarks went viral after she won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for the hit HBO show during Sunday night’s live ceremony.

“Go Birds, f—k ICE and free Palestine,” the 30-year-old actress, who is Jewish and a lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan, said at the conclusion of her emotional speech to cheers as she exited the stage.

She’ll be really angry when she reads Elliott Abrams’ Mosaic article.

What’s Happening to Us? On Top of Everything Else, Today is September 11. Putin’s Taunting and Job Numbers.

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Bad morning. We are rocked by the horrible reality of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, 31, a close ally of President Trump, during a campus event yesterday in Utah. Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann wrote shortly after Kirk’s death was affirmed:

Some also observed a cruel irony in the life cut short: Kirk was engaged in debate, not violence, to win over his political opponents when an assassin’s bullet struck him in the neck on Wednesday. According to a spokesman for the university, the shot was fired from a building 200 yards away from where Kirk was speaking outdoors. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds.

While waiting for word from the hospital, Mark Halperin called a special session of 2-Way, the popular online political meeting. Choking back tears, Halperin chastised anyone—including himself—who inadvertently referred to Kirk in the past tense. But it was evident from the first that Kirk had sustained a serious injury. A devastated President Trump announced the expected bad news on Truth Social:

The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!

Flags will fly at half-mast at the White House and federal buildings through Sunday evening. A manhunt is underway for the assassin or assassins. Kirk is credited with being a powerful influence in helping President Trump attract young voters to his cause. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

We wish we could say that everybody behaved with measured dignity in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder. MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd was Johnny on the spot. I take Dowd’s quote from a Hot Air post headlined “MSNBC President: Sorry about Shagging Charlie Kirk about His Murder. Or Something“:

“We don’t know any of the full details of this, that we don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration or…. So we have no idea about this,” [Dowd] mused on air, throwing out baseless hypotheticals as Kirk’s life hung in the balance.

From there, Dowd moved straight into smearing the victim. “He’s been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups,” he said, as if Kirk’s rhetoric somehow made him responsible for the bullet that struck him.

Dowd doubled down, offering his pseudo-profound take that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” In other words, according to him, Kirk’s speech—not the deranged individual who pulled the trigger—is to blame for the attack. “That’s the unfortunate environment we’re in,” Dowd concluded.

This was too much even for MSNBC, which fired Dowd.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans clashed after several Republicans called for a prayer. The Democrats were having none of that voodoo. The Federalist reports on “ghoulish” reactions from the Left. Another Federalist piece properly labeled even sicker responses as “demonic.” If you thought Matthew Dowd was quick out of the gate, the radical feminist site Jezebel beat Dowd by paying witches to put a curse on Kirk two days before his death. I guess that’s their version of thoughts and prayers. (Speaking of thoughts and prayers …)

Miranda Devine writes that the assassination of Charlie Kirk is the latest case showing that the U.S. is suffering an epidemic of leftist violence. “Who Will Stop America’s Slide into the Abyss?” asks Matthew Continetti at The Free Press. “Charlie Kirk’s death is the most stunning evidence yet that America is becoming two nations,” Continetti argues. Sohrab Ahmari writes about “What America Lost with Charlie Kirk.” Ahmari recalls that Kirk championed “open, earnest debate.” U.K. Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley argues, “The world is losing its mind. This feels like more than a cultural war: it’s spiritual.” Stanley writes:

A Democrat on the BBC was keen to stress that many people didn’t agree with Charlie, but that’s no excuse etc. This is what often happens when conservatives get shot (Israelis will be familiar): first comes the caveat, then the sympathy. It should be the other way around, but us Right-wingers, I’ve heard others imply, we sort of bring it on ourselves….

Sky News ran with “America has too many guns”. Kirk would’ve taken 30 seconds, without repetition or hesitation, to tell them why they’re wrong.

Conservatives rallied around the world like an extended family. He was only 31. He had two children. We messaged back and forth – what have you heard? Will Charlie make it? – and retreated to that Alamo of the lost: prayer.

Prayer vigils for Charlie Kirk and his family swept the country. Kirk was an evangelical Protestant who went to church on Sunday and had interesting ideas on the Blessed Virgin Mary as the antidote to toxic radical feminism. The Free Beacon mourned Kirk as an American Patriot, Faithful Christian, Ardent Zionist. Adam Rubenstein remembered “the Charlie Kirk I knew,,” who “was murdered under one of those tents where he defended freedom—his, and all of ours.” Ben Shapiro writes at The Free Press about the “tsunami of political violence, if left unchecked, will wash away this entire republic.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal ended this way:

Political figures from both parties denounced the attack on Kirk Wednesday, as they should. But for Mr. Trump, while this is a moment of personal sadness, it is also an opportunity for leadership.

A wee bit preachy, no?

On a human level, Fox unearthed Fox & Friends footage of Kirk’s ebullient three-year-old daughter running into the arms of the father she will not see again.

I can’t help reflecting that this is the second time in fewer than ten days we have been exposed to a horrific video of a murder. The other one showed the death of Iryna Zarutska, a refugee who came to the U.S. for freedom and safety, in Charlotte, N.C. This murder took four seconds and was eminently preventable.

On top of everything, it’s September 11. We mourn the fallen from that dreadful day 24 years ago. Was the unity we felt in the wake of that day superficial? If not, what has happened to us in the two intervening decades?

There is other news today. NATO allies scrambled to shoot down Russia’s all-night drone raid over Poland. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “taunting” President Trump and our NATO allies. The editors conclude:

Mr. Trump on Wednesday mused on social media “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!,” and a President sounding like a sidewalk gawker isn’t encouraging. But Mr. Trump is nothing if not ideologically flexible and his revulsion at the human toll of the Ukraine war is clearly sincere.

The President knows the pressure he can apply on Mr. Putin: More sanctions, more weapons for Ukraine and fewer restrictions on their use, and a reinforcement of NATO’s military power so it isn’t caught off guard by Russia’s probing. The drone parts now scattered all over Poland bear an old message, and it’s that weakness invites aggression.

Finally. The Epstein Scandal has claimed a politician’s head. But the head belongs to the U.K.’s ambassador to Washington, and thus is not either one of the two heads so ardently wanted to score political points on these shores.

The problem created by the Bureau of Labor Statistics downward revision of jobs numbers from March 2024 through March of this year isn’t cosmetic. Kyle Moran writes at Real Clear Politics:

Revisions to estimated job creation statistics are standard procedure – the BLS always adjusts preliminary estimates when more complete data arrives. But the scale of what’s been happening lately is unprecedented: May’s numbers were slashed by 125,000 and June’s by 133,000, a combined quarter of a million phantom jobs on top of yesterday’s numbers, that simply never existed.

MSM Blackout on Iryna Zarutska’s Murder. GoFundMe Fundraiser for Her Stabber. Not Giving Peace (Vigil) a Chance. No Such Thing as a Free Bus. And More   

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

As Hot Air’s Beege Welborn observes, the horrific video of a young woman being stabbed to death on a train isn’t a Netflix creation.

It is a surveillance tape. It captured the death of Iryna Zarutska, 23, who escaped war-ravaged Kyiv, only to be killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a homeless man with a violent criminal history. Iryna was taking Charlotte Area Transit System’s light rail train home from her job at a pizza parlor. In a post headlined “The Unspeakable Evil Progressives Have Unleashed Strikes in Charlotte,” Welborn describes the tape shows: 

Unbeknownst to Iryna, when she found a seat and pulled out her phone, besides being a turnstile jumper, the man slouched across the two seats directly behind her, whom someone described as ‘looking emotional,’ was a monster. A deranged beast who would suddenly do something so unspeakably savage to the slender wisp of a girl in the seat before him that it beggars description.

The girl who left the war-torn devastation of her home country in search of something better and safer, and started over in the Queen City.

The U.K. Telegraph also described tape:

The footage shows suspect Decarlos Brown Jr. appearing agitated and restless in his seat as Ms Zarutska sits in front of him wearing her pizzeria uniform.

Five minutes into her journey, Brown pulls out a fold-out pocket knife, stands up, and swings his arm high before allegedly stabbing her three times in the neck.

Then, outrageously, the Telegraph suggests that “right-wing influencers” have taken up the case to accuse the legacy media of ignoring the case. News flash: the legacy media is ignoring Iryna’s killing. You can find it in the Hindustan Times but not in the New York Times or Washington Post (at least as of early Monday morning). Glenn Reynolds explains why on Substack:

The truth is, this story just hurts the narrative. The black-on-white angle hurts, but the real problem is that Decarlos Brown, Jr., is a repeat violent offender who has spun through the revolving door of the criminal justice system for years, a man with 14 arrests, many for violent crimes such as larceny, armed robbery, and violent threats. But despite being regularly arrested, he was repeatedly released.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said that you can’t arrest your way out of these problems. Well, not if you keep letting people go, anyway.

National Review’s George Leef writes that the Charlotte killing “inconveniences” the leftist media. PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser calls the MSM blackout “pure evil”:

Really all I want to do is punch something. The nightmarish video from Charlotte, N.C. of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a psychopath who was roaming freely thanks to the Democrats’ violent felon fetish is sickening and infuriating. 

Speaking of sickening and infuriating, GoFundMe had a fundraiser for the Charlotte stabbing—but not for Iryna and her devastated family:

“While what happened on the Blue Line was a tragedy, what we mustn’t lose sight of is the fact that Decarlos Brown Jr. was failed categorically by the judicial system and the mental health services of North Carolina, and as such is not entirely to blame for what happened,” one page claimed.

The GoFundMe page, entitled “Raise Funds to Stop the Injustice Against Decarlos Brown Jr.,” has been taken down. I also found Mary Harrington’s Unherd piece unpalatable. Just to digress somewhat, Russia yesterday released its worst drone attack so far on Kyiv, for the first time striking a government building.  

Metro Menaces. Decarlos Brown isn’t the only person who shouldn’t have been roaming the streets. “Meet the worst transit terrors in NYC with more than 5,000 busts between them — and most still roaming streets” is the headline of a New York Post exclusive. Meanwhile, two seventeen-year-olds have been arrested for the shooting death of Capitol Hill intern Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, and a third suspect is still being sought. They have been charged as adults. The charge is premeditated first-degree murder while armed. 

Is Nothing Sacred? The White House Peace Vigil is no more:

Federal law enforcement officials on Sunday dismantled parts of the White House Peace Vigil, widely considered the longest continuous act of political protest in U.S. history, about 36 hours after President Donald Trump ordered: “Take it down. Take it down today. Right now.”

The peace vigil — a call for nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflict — has maintained its position in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue and visible from the north side of the White House, for more than 40 years. It has survived seven U.S. presidents, countless global conflicts, hurricanes and blizzards, heat waves and floods.

When GOP Congressman Jeff van Drew first called attention to the Peace Vigil, President Trump assumed it was a homeless encampment—an eminently reasonable assumption. But believe it or not, all the vigil keepers maintain residences elsewhere. But what does this mean for nuclear disarmament?

While we’re semi-on the topic of war and peace, the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins writes that restoring the name “Department of War” to the former Defense Department is a “good start” and has other suggestions to end euphemisms in government:

Treasury should become the Dollar Printing Like Confetti Department. In 1971 an ounce of gold cost $35—now it’s more than $3,600. Penny-postcard stamps cost 61 cents. That’s a lot of confetti. Complicit is the Federal Reserve, better named the Federal Preserve for Economic Ph.D.s. Now Mr. Trump wants to use them as the interest rate-slashing Federal Punch Bowl Filler. Watch your wallet. And given how many revisions we see on jobs data, let’s call the Bureau of Labor Statistics the Wild A— Guessing Gang.

No one really knows what the Agriculture Department does. I suggest a new name: the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Subsidizer. …

The Education Department, which apparently is still around, is better as the Remedial Instructor Full Employment group. English teachers might suggest probity and veracity in naming conventions. Or not. More than half of Americans have literacy below a sixth-grade level. There are 30 schools in Illinois with zero students reading at grade level. Alternatively, we could call it the Raise College Tuition Annually Department, done effectively by the federal guarantee of student loans.

A government department in the spotlight lately is the Health and Human Services Department. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a raucous hearing before a Senate Committee last week. The Free Press has a star-studded podcast on whether Kennedy is a success or failure at HHS. The New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes about why the food industry and the Left really hate RFK Jr.

Steven Koonin’s Wall Street Journal piece, headlined “At Last, Clarity on Climate,” argues that a Department of Energy report is drawing predictable criticism from politicized scientists. Another valuable Wall Street Journal column this morning is Allysia Finley’s on “America’s ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Economy,” which says everything from personal credit cards to mortgages and government budgets is overly reliant on debt.

While some of us are looking for “I Heart Monroe Doctrine” T-shirts in the wake of the U.S. strike on a speedboat that sent death-dealing drugs and eleven Tren de Aragua members to Davy Jones’ Locker, Senator Rand Paul does not appear to be among the fans of the aforementioned event. Senator Paul has ripped Vice President J.D. Vance’s assertion that executing these cartel members is a good use of military resources. Paul argues that they should have had trials.

The New York Post’s Charles Gasparino has a weekend piece saying that New York should exercise the “nuclear option” and let Zohran Mamdani win the mayor’s race so the city can hit bottom and start to rebuild. Of course, they aren’t letting Mamdani win—he’s walking all over them. Fox’s Kennedy and Natalie Dowziky say on Reason that Mamdani’s free buses could break the city’s budget. Oh, and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib delivered a rousing speech that glorified terrorists and killers at the recent People’s Conference for Palestine.

Happy Monday!