Issue: Economy

She’s not just some faceless bureaucrat anymore.

President Donald Trump’s firing of former Bureau of Labor Statistics head Erika McEntarfer ensures that, for a few weeks at least, many swamp residents will toast her as a martyr.

Ms. McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, was fired after a weak jobs report and downward revisions of previous jobs reports. President Trump called the jobs reports “the biggest miscalculations in 50 years.” The president charged that Ms. McEntarfer had tried to help former President Biden by “lifting” numbers for him.

White House Economic Council adviser Kevin Hassett was considerably more measured than the president when he talked with NBC’s Kristen Welker yesterday:

“Isn’t this the very definition of shooting the messenger?” Welker asked, after reading a statement from William Beach, the former BLS commissioner, who said it was setting a dangerous precedent.

“No. Absolutely not,” Hassett said, arguing that he was working at the BLS and had a huge, politically important revision coming out than he would have also released a lengthy report as to why it happened. 

“Trump Claims the Jobs Report Was Rigged. Was It?” is the headline of Allysia Finley’s Wall Street Journal column this morning. Finley concludes:

What does Mr. Trump plan to do if next month’s jobs numbers are meh or worse?… Mr. Trump does himself and his party no favors by waving away economic reality. Democrats spent the Biden presidency playing down inflation, and look where it got them.

High Five: The Senate has confirmed Judge Jeanine Pirro as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (to the chagrin of the mainstream media). While the Senate confirmed 10 Trump nominees, including Andrew Puzder as Ambassador to the European Union and Brian Burch as Ambassador to the Vatican, the Democrats thwarted further confirmations.

Meanwhile, Texas Democrats are fleeing the state to thwart a redistricting vote that could benefit Republicans, marking a dramatic effort to derail an upcoming legislative process.

It’s difficult to see how any human being can fail to denounce Hamas in the bitterest terms after the terror group released a photo of starving hostage Evyatar David digging his own grave. Even if the story is behind the paywall, you can see the picture of David at the U.K. Telegraph. The New York Post cover yesterday also had a picture of David. Words fail me. Today’s cover is Mr. David’s brother begging for his brother’s life.

“The West Has Rewarded Hamas for the Torture of Evyatar David” is the headline on Brendan O’Neill’s London Spectator story. He writes:

They’re making Jews dig their own graves again. In grim mimicry of their Nazi heroes, who would often force Jews to dig ditches before shooting them into them, Hamas has released a video showing a shockingly emaciated Israeli hostage digging a grave. ‘This is the grave where I think I’m going to be buried,’ says the bag of bones as he feebly scoops up dirt with a spade. It is one of the most chilling images we have seen in this century….

This is more than torture. It is more than psychological cruelty. It is the rebirth of the fascist imagination itself. …

And what is the reward? Western elites—including the leaders of France, the U.K., and Canada—are rushing to express their support for a Palestinian state. Oh, sure, some (but not all) say that of course Hamas will not be included in the imaginary new Palestinian state. Of course. Of course. Who are they kidding?

New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin writes that a Palestinian state would be a jihadi state (conveniently adjacent to Israel):

The clamor for a Palestinian state is the appeasement of our times.

It travels under the disguise of a “two-state solution.”

As such, think of it as the two-state delusion.

That’s what it is because too many Islamists, from Iran to Arab lands and around the world, remain committed to destroying the Jewish state….

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal puts the onus of the starvation of Gaza people on Hamas (Hamas really digs starving people) and says that the elite support of a Palestinian state stiffens Hamas’s resolve:

Reveling in French, U.K. and Canadian plans to recognize a state of Palestine, Hamas has hardened its position and rejected new cease-fire talks. But even if recognizing a Palestinian state weren’t a gift to Hamas now, it would still be a policy error….

The good news is that the decisions that matter aren’t made in Paris, London or Ottawa. No Palestinian state is coming because the PA is weak, corrupt and intransigent, and Hamas wants to kill every Jew.

Before moving on to something less dark, I must recommend two City Journal pieces on the Luigi Mangione phenomenon. Jesse Arm discusses “the rise of Luigism,” most recently manifested in the cheering over the murder of Wesley LePatner, a Blackstone executive. The great Theodore Dalrymple pens a chilling piece headlined “Luigi Mangeone and the Romance of Murder.”

And now for the promised good news!

“The Conservative Women Who Are Having It All” in the Wall Street Journal profiles politicians and other prominent women on the right who are juggling work and family on their own terms. They credit grit, religious faith, family support, and a laser-like focus on priorities.

The WSJ profile begins:

According to the gospel of TikTok, conservative women are a mix of trad wives, pro-natalists and wide-eyed aspirants to the “princess treatment.” But a very different ideal looks more like May Mailman, an over-full-time working mother whom others on the right speak about with awe.

At 37, Mailman is the deputy assistant to Donald Trump and senior policy strategist at the White House. Pregnant with her third child, she flies home to Houston on Friday nights to spend the weekend with her family. Once, she gave a major interview one week postpartum, terrified she’d leak on camera. Her first child, not yet 3, has already been on 14 flights.

Hey, I know her! May is the former Director of Independent Women’s Law Center. You’ll love meeting all the dynamic conservative women in the WSJ profile!

And here’s something else I loved: The Lefty Guardian’s article a few days ago headlined “He May Talk Rubbish, but Trump Has an Eye for Beauty, and That Is a Breath of Fresh Air.” Of course, the writer, Simon Jenkins, had to hem it about with a trigger warning! After the warnings, Jenkins writes:

When he came to office, one of Trump’s first actions was extraordinary. He directed his fire at what he saw as the ugliness of American architecture. He demanded that at least federal buildings should be “visually identifiable as civic buildings, and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States”. All plans had to be submitted to Washington for his approval.

There was more than an element of psychological obsession in such bureaucracy. American classicism – born of an admiration for France’s republicans – was a cult throughout the 19th century. The White House was based on a Dublin mansion. This week it was announced that it is to get what it has always lacked, a sumptuous new ballroom in which to receive and entertain foreign dignitaries. It is to be classical, with no nonsense about trying to make it look modern. That a president should seek to revive both regional and European style in the face of America’s relentless modernism is a breath of fresh air.

Not enough fuss has been made about the architectural firm the White House has hired to design the ballroom. Ms. Must positively swooned when he read that it is McCrery Architects. Oh, my gosh. They do beautiful stuff! In addition to being a practicing architect, James McCrery is a professor in the Catholic University School of Architecture, which provides this sketch of McCrery. He is a leading light of the Civic Arts Society, which tried, alas, unsuccessfully, to halt an ugly Frank design for the Eisenhower Memorial.  

Donald Trump, Aesthete. Who knew?