Issue: Politics

Great. The shutdown is over. Now the wise men and women of the nation’s capital can get down to important business. Who are you fooling? I nominate this passage for Quote of the Day:

Could there be a better example of Congressional dysfunction than that its first pressing business after the government reopens is . . . the return of the Jeffrey Epstein follies? This is exactly what the American people weren’t waiting for.

— Editorial in the Wall Street Journal headlined “The Epstein Follies Return”

Yep, that’s contemporary Washington for you.  Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York captures the mood of the most important city on earth:

The fever swamps have become so excited about the Epstein emails that we need someone to come up with a new grand unified theory to fit the tidbits. Trump, as president, spending holidays with Epstein! Trump, as president, meeting Epstein in Europe! Epstein giving Putin blackmail dirt on Trump! Michael Wolff masterminding the whole thing!

Indeed the chattering classes are chattering about the antics of Trump-obsessed journalist (is this description redundant?) Michael Wolff, who buddied up to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, advising him how to be “the bullet” that ended candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. Four Republicans—including shy Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—joined Dems in voting to force release of Epstein files. More on the battle of the email releases.

Hapless former Harvard President Larry Summers, who emailed Epstein that he thought women were less intelligent than men, got caught in the web. The best—and most honest—take on the Epstein files comes this morning from USA TODAY’s Nicole Russell, whose column is headlined “I Didn’t Vote for Trump for his Character. But We Deserve the Truth about His Past.” Russell writes:

I voted for President Donald Trump, and I support a lot of his policies and politics: Lowering taxes, brokering peace deals and ordering strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

I’ve never supported Trump because he had stellar character ….

Let me be clear on this: If Trump has a sordid past that includes knowing about a child sex trafficking ring, as a mother and a Republican, I want to know about it. I have a right to know, and so does every other American.

I’d like to know when Democrats became aware of these emails linking Epstein and Trump. If these are so damning − and they might be − why haven’t they been mentioned sooner for justice to be done?

The reviews of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s performance in handling the shutdown are in, writes Matthew Continetti, and they aren’t good. Continetti is brutal:

Now disgruntled Democrats are acknowledging what Republicans have known for years: Mr. Schumer puts his own interests ahead of the institution—and of everyone else. The 74-year-old five-term senator exemplifies a brittle establishment terrified of the growing socialist movement in the Democratic Party….

Senate Democrats begin the 2026 election cycle with an unfavorable map, a disgruntled base and a weak and selfish leader. One half of the country finally understands what the other half has known all along: Nobody likes a Schumer.

The Shutdown Party. Congressional Democrats are throwing a tantrum over the seven Dems and one independent who voted to end the shutdown, while Democratic National Committee staffers find calls to end remote work and return to the office “callous.” Former Biden adviser Neera Tanden responded to the shenanigans:   

“If you think democracy is on the line – working in the office is not a big ask,” Tanden wrote in a post on X. “And there are plenty of other people willing to step up. Get yourselves together people.”

The shutdown ended without the Dems getting enhanced subsidies to disguise the Affordable Care Act’s unaffordability. But they did bargain to get a debate over health care. Rich Lowry’s New York Post column is headlined “How the GOP Can Push True Health Care ‘Affordability’ — and Win.” Lowry writes:

Obamacare taxes should be repealed, the law should allow for genuine bare-bones “catastrophic plans” for those who want them, and states should be given as much leeway to innovate as possible. 

Republicans would also be smart to build on a Trump administration rule from the first term that allowed employers to fund accounts — Health Reimbursement Accounts, or HRAs — for employees to buy their own individual coverage. 

None of these ideas will make the case for themselves.

Republicans have to introduce them to the public and explain them, even if it makes them uncomfortable and even if they’d prefer to talk about something else.

Real Clear Politics on Sirius FM Radio asks if President Trump can “flip the script” on health care.

Long before the Biden administration went giddy supporting mutilation of small children—which it dubbed “gender affirming care”—Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University was a hero of sexual sanity. We’re proud that Independent Women had Dr. McHugh speak at an Independent Women event back when the issue was just a shadow on the horizon. Sohrab Ahmari has a highly recommended (by me) Unherd piece on Dr. McHugh’s work. I can’t resist going long and quoting the beginning of Ahmari’s piece—it shows the incipient insanity Dr. McHugh spotted earlier than most:

At one point in 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins) tells detective Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) that “there are three major centers for transsexual surgery: Johns Hopkins, University of Minnesota, and Columbus Medical Center.” Buffalo Bill, the woman-skinning serial killer Starling is pursuing, probably “applied for sex reassignment at one or all of them,” only to be rejected. 

That bit about Bill’s rejection — the killer merely thinks he’s trans — is a relic from an earlier, hard-to-imagine age, when patients’ claims of belonging to the opposite sex were apparently subjected to rigorous scrutiny, rather than being readily affirmed. Yet the film’s dialogue fails the test of verisimilitude in one respect. By the time the events in Silence of the Lambs take place, in the 1980s, Johns Hopkins University’s sex-change clinic had been closed down.

Dr. Paul McHugh, then head of psychiatry at the Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, made the decision to shutter it in 1979. …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren. A cynic might say that the CFPB was designed to keep ordinary people from making choices their betters disdain. Now progressives are rallying around the CFPB again—and they should have checked their facts first:

Progressives are trumpeting a report that consumers’ financial data may be less secure following Trump administration efforts to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But in their eagerness to attack Trump, attention is refocusing on a massive scandal that plagued the “consumer watchdog” agency under Joe Biden– one that left over 250,000 people’s data exposed.

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters—a top MAGA foe— blasted Trump’s efforts to downsize the CFPB, claiming staffing and contractor cuts put Americans’ data at risk….

But critics say that in blasting current Bureau chief, MAGA favorite Russ Vought, progressives like Waters are forgetting about the biggest threat to consumer data security in recent years: A massive data leak that occurred under the previous Biden administration, under the leadership of leftist favorite, former CFPB head Rohit Chopra. And by attacking Trump now, they are merely serving to highlight the leak and the huge risks of the agency having such expansive power and authority.

In other news, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “image is stained” (per the New York Times) by a corruption inquiry that involves his inner circle. … The Trump administration is preparing tariff exemptions on certain foods … to which the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board responds, “Yes, We Want No Banana Tariffs.” … And “Climate Reality Hits Nantucket” details the tony island’s worst crisis of conscience since the islanders were forced—forced, I say—to drive away unwanted illegal immigrants….

… The American Spectator argues that 50-year mortgages are “the worst idea since New Coke.” I’d amend: worst idea since college loans. … People who drive big trucks should be able to read road signs—latest outrageous Trump demand. … What keeps Ms. Must up at night (thanks for asking)? When somebody as serious as Joel Kotkin argues that the U.S. could go communist. Please read Kotkin’s “The Specter of Communism Haunts the West — Mamdani Is Only the Beginning.”

We thought it might drag on and ruin the holidays. But last night the Schumer Shutdown collapsed (and probably with it Chuck Schumer’s political future). Fox Digital reports:

The Senate took a massive step forward on its way to reopening the government on Sunday, with a group of Senate Democrats caving and joining Republicans in their bid to pass a revamped plan to end the shutdown.

Eight Senate Democrats crossed the aisle to mark the first step in the GOP’s quest to end the shutdown. Many of the lawmakers that splintered from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were among those engaged in bipartisan talks over the last several weeks.

An extension of enhanced subsidies for ObamaCare was the sticking point for the Dems. They didn’t succeed and at most will get an agreement to debate health care and the subsidies (which is long overdue anyway). Progressive Democrats erupted. Senator Bernie Sanders hailed the deal as “a very bad night.” Here is the breakdown on who crossed the aisle:

Seven Democrats and one Democrat-affiliated independent — Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Angus King of Maine — voted alongside 52 Republicans to break the filibuster on the spending package, which includes three spending bills to fund SNAP benefits, veterans programs and congressional operations through Sept. 30, 2026.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only GOPer to vote no.

Last night’s 60-40 vote was only the first step, but barring an unexpected development in the House, the shutdown is ending. USA TODAY publishes a list of its shutdown end winners and losers. Moderate Democrats headed the winners, while “Republicans (kind of)” made it into both winners and losers. The Dems did win on one point—mass firings will be reinstated. This establishes the Dems as the party of choice for redundant workers.  

Powerline’s John Hinderaker thinks he knows what broke the Dems’ intransigence; The New York Times has six takeaways from the Senate deal to end the shutdown, including “Trump’s pressure tactics worked, even as voters blamed his party.” The radical lefty Daily Kos (remember him?) calls the eight sensible Dems who helped end a pointless shutdown “Vichy Democrats” and demands that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer must be replaced.

No Autopen Required. President Trump yesterday granted pardons to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and more than seventy others tied to an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election:

The full list of those pardoned, each of the president’s co-defendants who faced charges related to the 2020 “fake electors” plot, was posted to X just before 11 p.m. by Trump’s “clemency czar,” attorney Ed Martin..

Martin shared the pardon document in a reply to his May 26, 2025, post that read “No MAGA left behind.”

The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland has a good piece on why President Trump issued the pardons—they were for “citizens targeted by lawfare.”

Meanwhile, President Trump, who bestrides the tiny Daily Musts like a colossus, is floating the notion of a tariff rebate of $2,000 for citizens as the legality of his tariffs is being scrutinized by the Supreme Court.  An editorial in the steadfastly anti-tariffs Wall Street Journal says he’s doing this to blunt the harm tariffs are (in the opinion of the editors) doing to the economy:

This is a teaching moment for a high school logic class. Start with the contradiction that Mr. Trump can both pay a tariff rebate and pay down the national debt. The annual federal budget deficit is roughly $1.8 trillion even with tariff revenue, so paying a rebate would add to the national debt, not reduce it.

New Wrinkle in Class Warfare: “Grade Inflation Produced Mamdani’s Proletariat” is the headline on Allysia Finley’s column this morning in the Wall Street Journal. Unemployable college grads blame capitalism, but the real culprit is higher-ed subsidies, Finley argues:

Palantir CEO Alex Karp attributed Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York mayor to a reverse class warfare: “I think the average Ivy League grad voting for this mayor is highly annoyed that their education is not that valuable, and the person down the street who knows how to drill for oil and gas, who’s moved to Texas, has a more valuable profession.”

It’s understandable that grads might feel indignant about employer demands after having earned stellar GPAs for little effort and mediocre work. A recent Harvard report found that A’s account for about 60% of grades, compared with 25% two decades ago. Some 80% of grades awarded at Yale in 2023 were A’s or A-minuses.

It almost requires an effort to get a C…. Parents and students who pay $80,000 a year expect high marks in return…. Mr. Mamdani’s supporters are rightly angry that the value of their degrees and earnings have declined. Instead of blaming their woes on capitalism or Israel, they ought to be protesting big government and greedy colleges.

In the same vein, you might enjoy Helen Raleigh’s “Mamdani’s Vast Support Among the College-Educated Tells Us All We Need to Know about Higher Ed” at the Federalist.

Meanwhile, Renu Mukherjee notices something interesting about the racial make-up of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s voters in City Journal, and Santiago Vidal Calvo in the same journal observes that the Mayor-elect’s minimum wage hikes will have a devastating effect on young workers, while—oh dear—Roger Simon says Mamdani reminds him of somebody (thanks to Real Clear Politics for noticing Simon’s opus)

I knew Zohran Mandani reminded me of someone as I watched his victory speech on election night. Only minutes in, I realized who it was — Benito Mussolini, Il Duce himself.

A hardened leader determined to transform not just the city that had elected him but the entire country had replaced the sweetness and light, ain’t-I-cute-and-charming candidate of the campaign trail. Instead, he suddenly evinced the tough, take-no-prisoners swagger of Mussolini.

What little attempt he made at post-election reconciliation was less than half-hearted. As if to rub it in the faces of those who were not his followers, he intoned in Arabic, a mere twenty-four years after 9/11, “ana minkum wa alaikum,” which apparently translates to something like “I am of you and you are of us.” I wonder who he wasn’t including. …

Meanwhile, New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin practically begs Washington Republicans not to punish New York for electing Mamdani:

As awful as the mayoral election outcome was for sensible New Yorkers, misguided Washington Republicans plan to use the results as a club to further punish the city.

If they succeed in hitting Gotham with enormous financial penalties for electing socialist radical Zohran Mamdani, the GOP wackos will end up penalizing all 8 million New Yorkers, including the 1 million who rejected Mamdani to vote for other candidates.

The efforts also could turn Mamdani into a martyr, which would boost his popularity and inspire far-leftist copycat candidates across America.

Another unintended consequence of the daffy congressional effort could be the death of the election chances of one of their own.

That would be firebrand Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has announced that she is running for Governor of New York.

I’ve noticed that many Republicans are very ho-hum about Tuesday’s election results (“they were all blue states anyway” is the line). James Carville’s predictions for 2028 might shake them up: The Dems will win, and a Democratic president and Senate will pack the Supreme Court.

Just For Fun. The New York Times did a big interview with Greg Gutfeld—there was a day we’d have said that such treatment by the New York Times meant you’d arrived. But Gutfeld arrived long ago with his 3 million late-night viewers. Speaking of late night, Sasha Stone dubs Jimmy Kimmel and his wife “the monsters of late night.” And huge kudos to Sidney Sweeney, who shows she can handle smug media hacks any time of the day or night.

Nancy the Ripper announced yesterday that she will not seek re-election to Congress, ending a “storied political career” with an unwrinkled brow, at the sprightly age of 85. Diabetics are warned to keep away from the high saccharine content of MSM farewells to the former Speaker of the House.

The New York Times, for example, came up with “To Americans, Pelosi Was the House Speaker. To San Francisco, She Was Mom.” From the same outlet, another mom-themed report: “The Rise of Nancy Pelosi: From Stay-at-Home Mom to Speaker of the House.”

President Trump spared no words in ushering off stage the women who recently called him “vile” and “the worst creature on earth.” “Nancy Pelosi Prepares for Sad Future of Outsider Trading,” trumpets the Babylon Bee.  

Elsewhere, the news is not as cheery. Travelers must brace for turmoil and inconvenience as flight cuts necessitated by the government shutdown kick in at airports around the nation. “Democrats Don’t Mind Your Flight Delays” is the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Most folks on Capitol Hill were optimistic this week about a deal to end the month-long government shutdown, which has accomplished nothing. But behold the cynicism of Democrats, who now want to exploit their Tuesday election victories to prolong the dysfunction at the public’s expense. …

The proles languishing on the tarmac for hours can take heart—your suffering is an assist to the Democratic brand. You may miss Thanksgiving this year when you see that red “canceled” notice on the departures board, but rest easy that you helped Democrats stir up their voting base for the 2026 midterms.

Democrats are also suddenly nonplussed about lapsing food-stamp benefits or government subsidized preschool. Democrats declare that these are cherished national priorities any time the GOP suggests reforms for better incentives or the most modest spending restraint.

While emboldened Dems seem to be digging in on the shutdown, Fox’s terrific Chad Pergram sees signs of movement coming from an emerging GOP plan to end the shutdown. But it’s all very preliminary. President Trump’s call to kill the filibuster to open the government has met with resistance. “The filibuster is a wall against a Mamdani-inspired socialist dystopia,” Washington Post conservative columnist Marc Thiessen argues. “Democrats’ off-year wins remind us why the filibuster is needed,” the Washington Examiner explains.

What about those off-year wins?

Matthew Continetti argues that 2025 election results spell doom for Republicans in 2026 if they don’t get serious about the economy in a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “Trump’s GOP Is Losing Independents“:

Republicans enter the midterm cycle shouldering two related burdens: economic dissatisfaction arising from high prices and a revolt among independents. …

The president rarely talks affordability. He prefers to announce that inflation is dead and defeated. He points to falling gasoline prices. Yet relief is fleeting. It can’t compensate for the rising cost of groceries, housing and healthcare. What’s more, his policies that restrict the supply of goods and labor, such as tariffs and mass deportations, make the problem worse. So does badgering the Fed to cut rates before inflation is tamed….

The country doesn’t wait for parties to get their act together. It chooses the alternative. If Republicans fail, big-government populists in both parties will run roughshod over confused and ambivalent incumbents. It won’t just be the economy that suffers. America will too.

Former World Bank head David Malpass, meanwhile, gives the Federal Reserve a big helping of blame for the “affordability crisis.” Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel says it’s “time to reset the GOP clock”:  

Here’s what time it is: Time for a GOP gut check. Time to set aside the play-it-by-ear triumphalism of the past year—and come up with a plan. …

Even this White House’s trademark initiatives—the things it talks about with some relative regularity—roll out like a drunk exiting a kegger. Tariff uncertainty has been a hit to the economy. But try keeping track of what to like or dislike, much less process merit. Would that be the 35% levy on Canada of a Friday? Or the 45% of a Saturday, after the president watched a commercial? Or the 50% on metals, or the 25% on autos (with exceptions)? Or the 30.7% . . . 40.7% . . . 135%—wait, no, the 58% (?) rate on China? Maybe it’s just easier to believe—as many a shopper or small business now does—the left’s simple premise that all this is costing you money.

This day-by-day approach to governance extends to the Republican Congress….

Veteran political reporter Michael Barone sees bad news for the GOP and warnings for both parties in the election results. Hope for the Republicans could come from an unexpected direction, Barone proposes:

A Supreme Court rebuff to Trump could turn out to be a political gift to the Trump Republican Party. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April thrust his job approval downward, and 3% inflation, which, though low, can be plausibly linked to continuing tariffs, provides a basis, as Mamdani has shown, for Democratic campaigns. Also, should Trump acquiesce to an adverse Supreme Court decision, as Truman did 73 years ago, voters’ fears of an authoritarian presidency will be mitigated.

Though entirely expected, the victory of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York sent the most shockwaves through the system. Reason’s J.D. Tuccille writes that Mamdani’s win suggests a “socialist future” for the Democratic Party. Robby Soave of the same publication says it “would be a mistake to underemphasize the radical nature of Mamdani’s ideology” and highlights the Mayor-elect’s BFF, Hasan Piker, who opines that it’s a tragedy that the U.S. won the Cold War.

But there’s a new development in New York politics. Rep. Elise Stefanik announces today that she is running for Governor of New York to “clean up Kathy Hochul’s catastrophe.” Larry Kudlow asks, “Can Elise Stefanik and Jessica Tisch Save New York?” Jessica Tisch is New York City’s respected Police Commissioner.

President Trump is trying to “make America thin again,” as Rich Lowry puts it in the New York Post. Lowry writes:

President Donald Trump this week cut deals with the drug-makers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to increase access to obesity drugs in a major benefit to American public health. 

The agreements are a win-win-win — good for consumers, good for the companies and good for Trump. 

One of the most irrational superstitions of our time is that Big Pharma, which has for decades been routinely delivering near-miraculous therapeutics to extend and improve our lives, is a public enemy.

There was some Oval Office drama (well, there often is) when a guest fainted during the obesity drugs presentation. Meanwhile, he won his battle over whether you can put an imaginary sex on your passport.

The mess at Heritage over President Kevin Roberts’ statement on Tucker Carlson continues. This is the best synopsis I have seen of what happened. It has spurred a debate on conservative principles between the revered Robby George and John Zmirak.

The Free Press addresses the Heritage controversy both in Nellie Bowles’s Friday commentary and “The Real Split on the Right: Influencers Versus Conservatives,” by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Another important piece not to be missed: John Kass’ column on the illegal alien trucker who killed family friends of Kass and who should not have been able to obtain a driver’s license.

And I leave you this Friday morning with my choice for …

Quote of the Week:

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.”

– New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani

Ominous.