On this episode of Network ReACTS, IWN Director Julie Gunlock speaks with Natalya Murakhver, Co-founder of Restore Childhood and producer of “15 Days: The Real Story of America’s Pandemic School Closures.”
Resources Mentioned:
Issue: Media Bias
Can Super Bari Save Moribund CBS? Fiery RFK Jr. Hearing. Don’t Be So Defensive—It’s the War Department. Time Running Out for NYC Mayor’s Race. And More
Gob smacked by a second Trump administration, the legacy media has all but turned up its heels and died. Yet just when we thought it was RIP for the MSM, CBS (of all places) is poised to possibly do something radical. Puck News reports:
With Paramount securely in his pocket, David Ellison is on the verge of acquiring Bari Weiss’s The Free Press and tossing her the keys to CBS News. The deal is on the 1-yard line, I’m told.
National Review suggests that CBS is “rethinking its life choices.” Dan McLaughlin writes:
What’s interesting, and suggests a broader rethinking of the future of CBS, is that this comes six weeks after Paramount and CBS pulled the plug on The Late Show and sacked its host, Stephen Colbert. Taken together, the two moves imply that an ossified, closed-minded, smug, and unreflective liberalism just doesn’t have a future in attracting a mass audience in today’s shifting media landscape.
Maybe nobody does, and maybe a benefit of bringing in Bari Weiss, like a benefit of ending The Late Show rather than recasting its host, is simply to cut costs by eliminating a whole lot of well-compensated people who have been working on money-losing ventures for the network for a long time. But either way, this may not be your grandpa’s CBS for very much longer.
Liberals are fuming about this development:
“David Ellison vowed not to politicize Paramount — yet his first big move at CBS News is a major bet on Bari Weiss, one of the most polarizing figures in media,” Oliver Darcy began his newsletter Wednesday night. “Weiss, the stridently pro-Israel, proudly anti-‘woke’ culture warrior, has built her brand on polarizing political commentary — supposedly the type of material Ellison signaled to reporters that he wishes to run away from.”
Darcy warned, “Handing Weiss the keys won’t broaden trust — it will further erode it among the people who actually watch the network, reinforcing suspicions about Ellison’s agenda. In effect, the move will set CBS News on a course to squander its hard-earned credibility with the audience that reveres its history and demands it stand unbowed to power.”
Further erode trust among the people who actually watch the network … this is a small number, who cares? Weiss already has proven with The Free Press that she can produce first-rate journalism valued by readers on both sides of the aisle. Weiss is not conservative, but rather a classical liberal. Still, successful journalists who are snapped up by legacy outlets rarely fare well. Think how long it took for Megyn Kelly to regain her footing after her stint at NBC. But if anybody can do it, it’s Weiss.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s hearing before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday was fiery, and Kennedy gave as good as he got. Reviews were mixed. Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel’s review (“RFK Jr.’s Goat Rodeo“) can be summed up in one word: ouch. Strassel writes:
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has married ineptitude to pet obsessions, producing a goat rodeo for the ages. New week, new mess: purgings, resignations, policy reversals, conflicts of interest, elimination of transparency. The agencies Mr. Kennedy oversees—the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health—already had problems after years of politicization and squandered credibility. Now they have problems on RFK levels of testosterone.
RFK’s MAHA base will seek to make this about ideology, to claim their hero is being attacked because of his views. Those views certainly provoke criticism, but that isn’t the root of the problem. Strip away how one feels about food dyes or processed food, Covid boosters or failed “experts,” and you are still left with a mess. Consider the HHS secretary on the metrics of good (political) business: strategic goals, performance, customer satisfaction. Especially as this agency oversees a quarter of federal spending.
One big problem: RFK alone among Mr. Trump’s cabinet members is pursuing his own agenda, not the president’s vision.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal (“RFK Jr.’s Operation Warped Memory”) charged that Kennedy did not “keep his vaccine story straight.” Vice President J.D. Vance defended Kennedy on X. There was plenty of grandstanding, little decorum, and harsh questions from both Democrats and Republicans.
Kennedy did take a scalp—it belonged to Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren: “I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator,” Kennedy told her. No biggie. “Everybody in this room took Big Pharma money,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. The Washington Times credits Kennedy with “beating back Senate Democrats’ blistering barrage of attacks Thursday accusing him of eviscerating vaccine policies.” Jesse Watters said last night on Fox that Kennedy had caught out Dems in lies.
Score One for Harvard? Maybe not. A federal Judge has ruled that the Trump administration illegally canceled $2.2 billion in grants, but an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calls it a Pyrrhic victory for Harvard, as President Trump won’t quit his efforts against the Ivy League school. The issue is antisemitism at Harvard.
After the Trump administration sank a speed boat carrying 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang of “narco-terrorists” and a cargo of death-dealing drugs, the Left is lionizing the late gang members. “Leftists Add Narcoterrorists to Their Mt. Rushmore Heroes” at American Greatness is worth a read.
We’re learning more about former President Biden’s autopen from a new batch of emails. Based on the new emails, we may now know more than Biden ever did about “his” sweeping grants of clemency in the waning days of his administration. A concerned staffer said that Biden didn’t even “review the warrants.” More on the fiasco here.
Meanwhile, the former president has been spotted in recent days with a bandaged head from skin cancer surgery (he also has stage 4 prostate cancer). We wish him well in his recovery.
Billionaire Bill Akman has done a stunning U-turn and is now backing former Governor Andrew Cuomo for Mayor of New York. If President Trump has a plan to thin the race, in an effort to prevent socialist Zohran Mamdani from becoming the Mayor of the financial center of the country, time is getting close. The New York Times recently tried to soft-pedal Mamdani’s self-proclaimed socialism. Ken Girardin writes in City Journal that voters need to take Mamdani’s socialism very seriously.
Mamdani’s latest is that he wants to debate President Trump one-on-one. Mamdani seems to have rejected the more realistic idea of debating one of his actual opponents, Andrew Cuomo, who has challenged Mamdani to debates:
“Let’s cut out the middle man. Why should I debate Donald Trump’s puppet when I could debate Donald Trump himself?” Mamdani’s campaign told Fox News Digital in a statement. “If Donald Trump is serious about intervening in the mayoral race, he should come to New York City and debate me directly about why he’s cutting SNAP benefits for hungry New Yorkers to give tax breaks to his wealthy donors.”
President Trump is signing an executive order today restoring the original name—the War Department—to what we have called the Defense Department since 1947. It will take an act of Congress to restore the old name. Powerline’s Bill Glahn applauds the name restoration in an item headlined “The End of Euphemism.”
I’ve mentioned author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell’s admission that he had lied about his views on a panel a few years ago. Gladwell pretended he approved of men in women’s sports. Douglas Murray is brutal:
Gladwell’s schtick might be to say banal things in ways that appear spicy and new. But he has made a very good career of it and been lauded by his peers.
Yet this week, he admitted that he is a coward….
In fact, in all the decades I have debated my own views in public, I don’t think I’ve often come across someone so willing and indeed eager to debate in bad faith.
But his admission helps us to understand something about the incentive structures in our own society.
Somber Anniversary. Texas Dems May Be Irony Challenged. Socialism’s Resilience. Who’s That on the White House Roof? And More
Today is the 80th anniversary of the U.S. dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. “The morning of 6 August 1945 began like any other on the Pacific island of Tinian. That was until the Boeing B-29 Superfortress lifted into the sky. Its destination: Japan. Its payload: ‘Little Boy’,” is the opening of a London Spectator story (referenced by Andrew Stuttaford in a meditation on today).
In a moving column, National Review’s Rich Lowry writes that, in deciding to drop the bomb, President Harry Truman made the right decision:
Whether it was justified to use the bomb constitutes one of the most controversial historical questions in American history, but it was clearly the right call.
If it’s nice to think that Imperial Japan would have decided to surrender on the same timeline without the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is no evidence of it.
Bequeathed with untold power by the new weapon, it is telling that we used the bomb to bring an end to a terrible war and didn’t use it to dominate Europe, or for other cynical purposes. Instead, our nuclear umbrella became part of a security arrangement that endured for decades, defending the free world from the Soviets and preventing the reoccurrence of world war.
Military historian Richard B. Frank also supports Truman’s decision to drop the bomb. “The moral indictment of the bombings works from a grossly upside-down portrait of the number and identity of the war’s victims,” Frank argues.
In an abrupt switch from a question of existential meaning, we must turn to the ridiculous: the Texas Democrats who have taken flight—ostentatiously—rather than provide a quorum on the state legislature that would led to redistricting. The GOP would gain five seats.
Hardly heirs to the heroes at the Alamo, the fugitive Democrats are hiding out in Chicago, guests of billionaire hotel magnate and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who wants to run for President. But, of course, Governor Pritzker is no stranger to politically motivated redistricting.
“The Democratic Protectorate of Illinois” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial. “Few do partisan gerrymandering better than Springfield liberals,” is the subhead. “Gerrymandering for Me but not for Thee,” is the headline of a Rich Lowry piece. No surprise that Gavin Newsom reared his well-coifed head, but the Terminator (you know who that is!) opposes him on his attempt at gerrymandering blackmail.
Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York is beautiful on the flight of the legislators:
House Democrats boarded a chartered jet and fled to Illinois, where Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker welcomed their arrival. And not just welcomed — Pritzker, who wants to be president and believes Democrats have not been aggressive enough in resisting President Donald Trump, had his staff assisting the Texas Democrats for weeks. “This is a righteous act of courage,” Pritzker said.
It was also an audacious blockade of … democracy. In one beautifully ironic moment, the Texas House Democrats posted a photo of themselves outside their private jet wearing T-shirts that said “LET THE PEOPLE VOTE.” Of course, they were acting to prevent a vote in the legislature, not allow one.
I like to picture the fugitive legislators ordering continental breakfasts from room service at a Pritzker Hotel.
“Trump Threatens to Take over DC After ‘Big Balls’ Lives up to His Name” is the headline on a Hot Air post by Buck Sexton. “Big Balls” is the nickname of a former DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine, who was bloodied by would-be car jackers on DC’s mean streets. He was chivalry itself:
Edward Coristine, whose LinkedIn handle earned him the nickname “Big Balls” at DOGE, was with a woman near downtown DC when he saw the group of juveniles approach their car and “make a comment about taking the vehicle,” according to a Metropolitan Police Department incident report obtained by The Post.
“At that point, for her safety, [Coristine] pushed his significant other … into the vehicle and turned to deal with the suspects,” the dramatic report continues.
Officers patrolling the 1400 block of Swann Street NW — a popular area with several shops, bars and restaurants about a mile north of the White House — noticed “a group of approximately ten juveniles surrounding the complainants’ vehicle and assaulting [Coristine],” the report states.
Police have arrested two juvenile suspects. Other minor suspects remain at large. The President responded:
“The most recent victim was beaten mercilessly by local thugs,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps it should have been done a long time ago, then this incredible young man, and so many others, would not have had to go through the horrors of Violent Crime. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
DC is just one of the crime-ridden red cities in the country. Six suspects have been arrested in a racially-charged beatdown in Cincinnati that is attracting national attention. Druggies are overrunning Boston’s ritzy Beacon Hill neighborhood. One blue city had progress to report:
Shootings and the number of New Yorkers who fell victim to gun violence have plunged to all-time lows so far this year — even as the Big Apple contended with its deadliest mass shooting in 25 years, new NYPD crime statistics show. …
Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York, credited four very specific reasons for the improving crime statistics.
The NYPD’s “relentless focus” on seizing illegal guns is bearing fruit, as is the department’s precision policing strategy that focuses cops on ever-smaller areas where crime is concentrated, he said.
The city investing millions of dollars into crime prevention organizations and district attorneys speeding up prosecutions is paying off as well, Aborn said.
Let’s hope this decline in gun crime continues even if Mr. Mamdani becomes mayor and replaces cops with social workers. Who are we kidding?
Speaking of Mr. Mamdani, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is headlined “The Scholar Who Saw Mamdani Coming in 2003.” The scholar is Alan Charles Kors, whose views are described by Daniel Shuckman:
Why has socialism remained resilient as a political ideal? How can a socialist candidate be the front-runner in the race for mayor of America’s largest and ostensibly most capitalist city? …
Since American children and college students weren’t being taught what happened under actual socialist regimes, it was only a matter of time before simplistic slogans attacking private property, billionaires and “profits before people,” would be successfully revived by a smooth-talking demagogue….
Is Mr. Mamdani proposing a takeover of farming and the establishment of gulags as the Soviets did in Ukraine in the 1930s? No, the mayor has no such power. But the embrace of even an innocuous-sounding, half-baked program of government-controlled food distribution—“keeping prices low, not making a profit,” his campaign website says—is disturbing for what it reveals about Mr. Mamdani’s knowledge and mindset.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gushed over Mamdani yesterday. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin writes that Warren’s embrace of Mamdani is “the latest example of Dems floundering—and their zany agenda.”
The Federalist’s Ben Weingarten writes that “absent justice” in the Russia hoax, the lesson is that you can get by with such a high-level scam—and that it will happen again.
Will I be drummed out of the conservative movement if I admit that there is nothing that I would dread more than hearing the Clintons testify before the House Oversight Committee? PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser seems not to expect much in the way of revelations from the couple, noting that, after all, “This ain’t Bill and Hillary’s first subpoena rodeo.”
Two Must Reads from the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages: “Kill Jews, Get Your Own State,” and “Britian Is On the Verge of Regime Change.” The latter is by Dominic Green. Guess what country he believes already has had a regime change.
Who was that up on the roof of the White House? President Trump, who took a stroll on the roof of the Executive Mansion. Apparently, it was to observe construction. It’s related to the new ballroom. Best headline from Babylon Bee:
Secret Service In Awe As Trump Walks On Moderately Sloped Roof
Hillary & Co: Illusionists. Why Were Important Documents in an FBI Burn Bag? Sickos Rejoice in One Massacre Victim’s Death. Palestine Chic & More
Even fully paid-up members of the let sleeping dogs lie club must sit up and take notice.
When respected George Washington University law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley writes a column like this, you know Russia collusion-gate has legs. Here’s Turley’s headline:
Democrats pulled the greatest political con job ever on Americans. It’s finally unraveling
Turley writes:
This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics.
What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.
Similarly sober-minded is Douglas Murray, who argues that “it’s important to get answers to Hillary’s RussiaGate plot.” The latest cache of documents to be declassified were the “annex” to the Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation. You’ll never guess where they apparently were:
Alas, the day is here: the annex to the Durham report, the investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax that former Attorney General William Barr initiated, has been declassified and released. It was discovered in the FBI burn bags by Director Kash Patel.
It wasn’t just this file—thousands of documents related to the Russian interference investigation that the Obama DOJ, or lack thereof, conducted. The annex is clear about a few things, some of which you’ve already read about from Katie.
The annex material is two things: extremely juicy and deeply troubling. Shawn Fleetwood of The Federalist examines Soros executive, who predicted that the FBI would “put more oil into the fire” to help the hoax along. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland says the legacy media hasn’t woken up to the Russia hoax but the public has. Meanwhile, investigative reporter John Solomon says the annex is the “smoking gun.”
The Democrats have been “rending their garments and screaming their hatred for Donald Trump” since before 2016, but it’s not working says Liberal Patriot Ruy Teixeira. Teixeira advises them too “give up on #Resistance 2.0.” Teixeira writes:
In short, voters get that Democrats hate Trump; they’ve already priced that in. Endlessly reminding voters of that fact and how Trump must be #Resisted! does nothing to change Democrats’ fundamental problem: voters neither like nor trust them and therefore do not find them an obvious choice over their opponents.
Not everybody got the memo, as a frail old man who emerged from somewhere to deliver an incoherent address last night obviously didn’t. Also unemployed, Kamala Harris was on Stephen Colbert (ditto employment status) last night, where she peddled her new book—“107 Days”—you should go on Amazon just to read the summary–hilarious.
The New York Post cover this morning is the sea of blue at the funeral of hero NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was murdered in the Midtown Manhattan rampage. “The Most New York Story There Is” is the headline, a reference to the fallen Officer as the son of both New York and Bangladesh. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch delivered an emotional eulogy.
“She Was Murdered in Midtown. The Internet Celebrated It” is The Free Press headline on a story about another casualty of the Midtown murders (I prefer “casualty to victim;”they fell in a war against civilization), Wesley LePatner. The TFP subhead:
Wesley LePatner was a mother, a wife, and a beloved boss. But to a growing number of people, she was a symbol of everything they hate.
Ms. LePatner was an executive at Blackstone, known as a mentor to young women.
The New York Post has published a disturbing picture of the face of Holly, the woman brutally beaten in the viral Cincinnati beatdown:
The woman viciously pummeled in a viral Cincinnati brawl has returned home to Russia — as relatives of one of the attackers claim the brutal beatdown is only drawing national outrage because the victim is white, according to reports.
The female victim — identified as Holly by a US senator from Ohio — was left with a gruesome black eye, busted lip, and bruises covering her face and neck after being knocked out during the horrifying melee that erupted in the city’s downtown early Saturday, shocking footage and photos showed.
Holly is also a casualty in a war against civilization.
A Cincinnati City Counsel member, you might recall, gloated that Holly and other casualties deserved the beatings because of their race. Victor Davis Hanson writes about the “the Cincinnati copouts.” Hanson cites four oddities in the attacks:
Three, there was neither a police presence nor any timely Good Samaritan interventions.
Instead, what ended the attacks was simply the fact that at least two of the targets appeared nearly comatose. So their assailants apparently concluded that their agenda of beating whites into unconsciousness was mostly complete.
Four, oddly few of the usual black spokespeople who habitually comment on interracial violence were to be seen.
Fox viewers will know about the Cincinnati brawl, but the three major broadcast networks did not cover it.
And now for some non-violent, good news.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel writes this morning “The Rise of the Climate Right.” The headline is a big misleading. You imagine RINOs protesting in favor of stringent net zero regulations. But that’s not what it is:
Something important happened this week, if the fuming response is anything to go by. The country is witnessing the rise—finally—of a scientifically armed and debate-ready climate right. The “consensus” gatekeepers don’t like it one bit.
The Energy Department issued a report whose title might glaze eyes: “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” The New York Times, foaming with indignation, rolled out every shame word to denounce the report’s authors as “skeptics” who “misrepresent” and “cherry-pick” as they “undermine” and “attack” the “consensus.” This fury was at striking odds with the smug “we’ve won” tone of recent climate journalism.
First Democrats said President Trump would crash the economy and when that didn’t happen, they said the Trump economy is a mirage, according to a column by Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York. Byron writes:
First of all, there’s no doubt that an annual GDP growth of 3.0% is a good report. But, just as the first quarter figure was low because of tariff-related increased imports, so the second quarter figure was high because of tariff-related decreased imports. So you can mentally take a little off the top. But remember that, even taking into account a drop in imports, the prediction for second quarter GDP was 2.3% — and then it came in at 3.0%. So it is good news.
And it is not a mirage. And it is not crashing the economy. Obviously, Democrats want to diminish President Trump’s accomplishments in any way they can. That includes talking down the economy. But when they say the president is crashing the economy, or that economic growth is a mirage, they only make themselves look less credible.
President Trump unleashed new tariffs yesterday and that and the new jobs report brought the market futures down early this morning. The Canada deal is in jeopardy because Canada backs a Palestinian State. You know what a Palestinian State is (to go back to a Byronic word)? A mirage. It doesn’t currently exist.
Canada is not the only country given to fantasy. “Diplomatic Terrorism?: France’s Recognition of an Imaginary Palestinian State” is a Gatestone headline. You can read the definition of a state. A Jerusalem Post editorial asks, “Why Is Europe Rewarding Hamas Terror with a Palestinian State?”
And closing with some good, clean fun—Don’t miss Jeffrey Blehar’s delightful “Jasmine Crockett, Genuine Counterfeit.”
Tsunami Hits West Coast. Sick: Trolls Go After Victim of Midtown Massacre. NYT Admits Photo of Gaza Child Was Fake News & More
After a massive earthquake in Russia’s eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, tsunami waves began pounding the U.S.’s West Coast early this morning.
Hawaii has downgraded the tsunami but urges citizens to stay alert. People in the Pacific Northwest, however, are facing life-threatening waves:
The waves, measuring at 3.6 feet, slammed into the Northern California coastline near the small enclave of Crescent City and Humboldt Bay, the National Weather Service Eureka announced.
The entire US West Coast had been under a tsunami advisory for hours after the world’s largest earthquake in 14 years struck 8.2 miles southeast of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia at around 7:24 p.m. ET….
Large parts of Russia, China, Japan, Guam, Canada, Mexico and Central and South America were all under tsunami warnings or advisories after the quake.
We will keep those affected by the tsunami in our thoughts and prayers.
The New York Times reports on the four innocent and outstanding victims murdered in yesterday’s shooting spree in midtown Manhattan. One victim was Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner; trolls are already making sick Luigi Mangione-inspired memes out of his death. A news story in the Wall Street Journal takes us inside 345 Park Avenue, the office building under attack, as frantic employees set up barricades. There were some lucky escapes.
The lobbying for more gun control began just as quickly as the memes. “Even New York’s Strict Gun Control Laws Couldn’t Prevent the Midtown Shooting,” is the headline on a New York Times story. But the shooter, Shane Tamura, obtained his concealed carry permit in Nevada, you say. That’s the trouble, the New York Times contends: piecemeal gun laws across the country. Tamura was obviously nuts and had had previous known bouts with mental instability. How about we strictly enforce the gun laws on the books before we go for a national gun control law? (Tamura had made the gun himself.)
Mayoral aspirant Zohran Mamdani responded to the shooting spree long distance from his Ugandan Shangri-La. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin found Mamdani’s response consisted of “shallow platitudes:”
Sensible New Yorkers didn’t need yet another reason to vote against Zohran Mamdani for mayor, but Monday’s horrific Midtown slaughter provided a clear illustration of why the radical Democrat must not win the keys to City Hall.
Not only is Mamdani on record as ardently supporting defunding the police but he lacks the seasoning, Goodwin writes, of Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who were on the spot:
Meanwhile, Mamdani is a rich-kid socialist whose wealthy parents made it possible for him to avoid work and try to become a rap artist.
Indeed, he seems never to have held an actual job before winning election to the Assembly four years ago, which should never be confused with full-time work.
One of the few things he’s done is steep himself in the toxic brew of NYPD hatred.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley has something to say about policing in his column this morning. It is headlined “Violent Crime Is in Decline. Why?” Riley argues that protests and passive policing during Covid, not illegal immigration, were the major factors:
The rise in crime that the U.S. experienced during Covid began before the pandemic. Laws had been passed that decriminalized lawbreaking. Progressive policies had been enacted that made it more difficult to prosecute offenders and keep violent suspects off the streets.
What Democrats have taken away from this experience is an open question. On the one hand, cities like Baltimore and San Francisco now have mayors and district attorneys who take crime control seriously. On the other hand, Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York, is a socialist who once tweeted that the New York City Police Department “is racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.”
If Mr. Mamdani wins, his police detail might want him to elaborate on that sentiment.
Threatened City: New York City remains a target of single-actor terror, according to City Journal’s Nicole Gelinas.
Don’t Everybody Answer at Once: “Why are Democrats so darned unpopular?” asks novelist and political commentator Mark Halprin. Halpin’s piece at The Liberal Patriot is so interesting that it’s hard to decide which point to tempt you with, so you’ll just have to read the whole thing.
Mr. Halpin has been a busy bee. He has a piece headlined “Trump Blinders in His Fight with Harvard” in the Wall Street Journal. Halprin argues that universities need reform but are likely to believe they can weather the current storm.
“Why Is Trump Winning His Fight with the Institutions?” is the headline on Matthew Continetti’s Free Press column. “The ultimate cause of the progressive implosion isn’t external force. It’s internal rot,” Continetti argues. In the same outlet, Joe Nocera wonders if the Fed will be the next institution to fall.
Chief Political Correspondent Byron York has a good piece headlined “For Now the Big Fight Is Democratic Anger vs. Trump Achievements.” Byron addresses the Dem mania for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. They don’t even have to trap President Trump in anything wrong—they simply have to drag out the Epstein matter for mileage. (Speaking of Dem anger, Spartacus Has Pitched Another Hissy Fit. But at least this one didn’t take 25 hours.)
Everybody suddenly wants to hear from Epstein’s procurer of underage girls. Ghislaine Maxwell is doing 20 years for her role in the Epstein horror, and she wants a deal to tell what she knows. Tina Brown, formerly Queen of Glitzy Journalism, has remarkable insights into Maxwell. Here is Ms. Brown’s lead sentence:
The reason why Ghislaine has never spilled what she knows before is that she has always pretended she doesn’t know anything. …
Maxwell probably won’t get liberated, but National Review hails EPA administrator Lee Zeldin as the liberator of American industry:
In March, we cheered the news that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin planned to “reconsider” the Obama EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding.” That finding allowed the EPA to regulate fossil fuel emissions under the Clean Air Act. On Tuesday, Zeldin announced that the EPA intends to rescind the finding, a step he described as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” This strikes a major blow against intrusive regulation of the energy, automotive, and manufacturing sectors.
The New York Times has “stunningly” admitted the truth about the picture of an emaciated child it used to illustrate starvation in Gaza:
The New York Times appended a story it published last week containing a shocking image of a child purportedly suffering from starvation in Gaza with an editor’s note Tuesday.
The note informs readers that Mohammed Zakaria al Mutawaq — the Gazan boy “diagnosed with severe malnutrition” and pictured in the article — also suffers from “pre-existing health problems.”
“We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition,” a spokesperson for the outlet said in a statement.
The New York Times admission may have been prompted by readers who noticed the unfortunate child’s mother did not look underfed.
Alex Berenson comments “urgently” on the New York Times’ Gaza coverage:
But the vaguely worded correction does not explain a far more serious problem. As part of the article, the paper ran a huge photo that seems to show the boy is dying of malnutrition — but excluded his brother, who is clearly of normal weight.
The Atlantic profile of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (“A Democrat for the Trump Era”) is behind the paywall. But tidbits have leaked out, including that Crockett tried to shut down the profile when the reporter began interviewing her colleagues. The Federalist’s Ed Scarry says the mouthy Ms. Crockett isn’t really a new kind of Dem. His headline:
The Democrat Party Has Always Been As Foul As Jasmine Crockett
Good News from the Same ish of the Atlantic: “Why Marriage Survives,” by Brad Wilcox. (You can read this one.)
Bombs Aweigh Friday: CNN Bombs & Misses! Mamdani Hits NYC’s Dem Establishment Hard. Biden’s Debate Bomb Anniversary Is Today & More
What was wrong with the CNN “report” that U.S. air strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had—so to speak—bombed? Aren’t intrepid journalists supposed to pursue the truth wherever it takes them, regardless of whether they offend people in high places?
Well, yeah. But the Free Beacon explains why CNN, which relied on a faulty document from an agency that is not held in high regard to discredit the Trump-ordered air strikes, likely was duped. By the Iranians. Talk about bombing! The Free Beacon reports:
The U.S. intelligence community deemed that initial assessment “low-confidence,” a fact CNN omitted from its original piece, and based it solely on satellite imagery and intercepted communications—known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT—from Iranian officials. Shortly after the assessment leaked, Axios reported that communications intercepted by Israel “suggest Iranian military officials have been giving false situation reports to the country’s political leadership—downplaying the extent of the damage.” Such communications likely made their way into the DIA report, according to three former U.S. intelligence operatives, a current U.S. official, and other veteran national security insiders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon both on and off the record. Some of them referred to the DIA as the “discount intelligence agency.”
“It’s basically messaging by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], messaging by Tehran,” said Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer with U.S. Central Command who operated in the Middle East for nearly 30 years. “DIA is taking a SIGINT report from the National Security Agency … and putting together an assessment to leak. I know it’s messaging, the Iranians know it’s messaging, and for some reason, NSA believes it’s actual f—ing intelligence.”
A current U.S. official familiar with the ongoing damage assessment process said that the DIA’s findings—as well as “the partisan hit job published by CNN”—have been “completely debunked” over the past 24 hours, including by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“Trump Bombs the Leak Machine” is the headline on Kimberley Strassel’s Wall Street Journal this morning. There is a good reason for the Trump administration to act decisively:
The Trump team went all-in this week countering the DIA report, with updates and briefings laying out the damage from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, military officials, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the White House press team. The president pressed his claims of success in 21 posts on Truth Social on Wednesday alone and piled on news outlets. The administration also opened an investigation into the leak and suggested it might limit some classified information-sharing with Congress.
This has put much of the media on the back foot, engaged in a lot of throat-clearing about the “fog” of intelligence and the precise definition of “obliteration.” CNN, hilariously, continues to refuse to take the loss, and instead ran a piece suggesting the administration’s “hyperemotional” response to “honest questioning” only makes it “look defensive.” Sure.
The White House has good reason to move quickly in correcting the record and sending a message. The leaks are designed to do political damage, and the administration knows from the first term how real that damage can be.
The CNN reporter who broke the Iran story was Natasha Bertrand, dubbed a “CIA stenographer” by Miranda Devine. Ms. Bertrand’s most illustrious scoop previously concerned the 51 former intelligence agents who claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. It was not. (Poignant Aside: Hunter is once again having trouble keeping current on his debts.)
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Fox’s Brett Baier that the Iran air strikes were “a hot in the arm” for American credibility. Rice, who served in the George W. administration, did mention any President or former President by name, but she did dwell on the Afghanistan withdrawal as catastrophic for American prestige. Amazing interview. Is Brett Baier inheriting the world’s greatest interviewer mantle of Oriana Fallaci?
Will the One Big Beautiful Bill be ready in time to land on President Trump’s desk on July 4? The Senate Parliamentarian has rejected key proposals regarding Medicaid. A Yahoo story crows that “she’s unelected, unknown and has the power to veto Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.” In “About Those ‘Millions’ Losing Medicaid,” Wall Street Journal explains that they fall into two categories: able-bodied recipients who won’t work even part-time, and illegal aliens.
Who put socialist Zohran Mamdani over the top and made him New York’s likely next Mayor? Veteran political sage Michael Barone characterizes Mamdani’s support:
Mamdani won by huge margins from the same constituency that cast the critical votes for [Mayor Brandon] Johnson in Chicago. It’s the same constituency that in 2021 in New York was the base of Maya Wiley, who won slightly more first-choice votes than Kathryn Garcia, whose base was affluent Manhattan, but fewer than the winner, incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, whose base was Blacks in Brooklyn and Queens.
I have called this constituency the “barista proletariat,” made up of people with temporary jobs in service industries, nonprofit organizations or media, perpetual grad students or adjunct lecturers who supplement their incomes often by gaming welfare systems and working off the books. You could see them as economic parasites on Manhattan’s rich finance and media wealth. They prefer to see themselves as cultural rebels against the larger society’s complacency and intolerance.
In a similar vein, Ms. Must’s favorite demographer Joel Kotkin explains at Spiked Online why Mamdani’s “progressive intifada” will be a disaster for New York:
By roughly four to one, Americans favour much higher taxes on the rich, longer holidays and government-imposed cuts to pharmaceutical prices. Rising inequality and the fear of downward mobility drive support for expanded government and wealth redistribution.
Yet it would be a mistake to see Mamdani’s success in New York as a precursor to left-wing victories at the national level. The problem for such candidates is that most middle- and working-class Americans don’t protest, much less riot, when their cities and states go downhill – they just move somewhere less stressed and more promising, mostly to the suburbs. Those who remain in the cities are now totally unrepresentative of America as a whole.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, despite having been walloped by Mamdani, so far plans to stay in the race. Current New York Mayor Eric Adams, whose term was hijacked by the illegal migrant crisis, is running as an Independent. Republican Curtis Sliwa is refusing pleas to drop out so the anti-Mamdani vote can coalesce. City Journal’s Jesse Arm has suggestions for NYC powerbrokers, including the tantalizing notion of persuading NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to run.
“Everything Conservatives Said about Joe Biden Got Exposed One Year Ago Today” is the headline on Matt Vesta’s reminiscence of then-sorta President Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate. The House Oversight Committee is valiantly trying to figure out who the real President was back then. Alas, the Committee had to subpoena Doctor Biden’s suddenly shy “work husband” Anthony Bernal to come and testify.
I can’t end without mentioning “Alligator Alcatraz,” a proposed detention center for illegal aliens with criminal histories in Florida’s scenic Everglades. The BBC notes:
The facility, in the middle of a Miami swamp, was proposed by state lawmakers to support US President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” explains the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, in a video set to rock music and posted on social media.
It’s not a sure thing—environmentalist and tribal leaders are fighting it tooth and nail. But I do look forward to feigning innocence and saying to my liberal friends, “Goodness gracious, they’ll be perfectly unharmed unless they get naughty and try to escape.” Just kidding. Or not.