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Issue: Politics

Dems Shocked—Shocked!—to Learn Graham Platner Is Not a Nice Person. Belgium Socks It to U.S. Team. Communist Threat: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. Trump’s Manifesto. Failure Factory Schools. And More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Stampede!

Yep, the Dems are trampling upon each other in their mad rush to make it crystal clear that no, they couldn’t possibly continue to throw their support behind Maine’s Nazi memorabilia festooned Senate aspirant Graham Platner. Not for one more second:

Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who chairs the powerful Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, also called on Platner to “immediately withdraw” from the race in a joint statement.

“The DSCC will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot,” Schumer and Gillibrand said.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who campaigned with Platner after other allegations against him surfaced in recent months, pulled his endorsement Monday and said Platner should drop out of the race. 

“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible,” he wrote. 

The Babylon Bee captures the plight of the Platner partisan:

Dems Wishing There Had Been Some Sort of Sign That Platner Was a Bad Person

The stampede started Monday after Politico published an exclusive that alleges Platner sexually assaulted a woman he had dated. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who had endorsed Platner, was one of those Dems who was suddenly very clear. Newsmax kindly summarized for us the Massachusetts Senator’s brave, righteous indignation:   

“There can be no tolerance”: Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls on Maine U.S. Senate Democrat nominee Graham Platner to drop out of the race after a woman accused him of sexual assault.

“Now more than ever we need leaders in Washington who reflect our values.”

A not dissimilar allegation against Platner by a conservative woman did not get Ms. Warren’s attention, but this time even Planned Parenthood, where Mr. Platner received his STD tests, responded negatively. Platner said on TV last night that he is “looking for a path forward.” Most likely Platner, abandoned by allies, will find that way short indeed. In “Goodbye, Graham,” National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar speculates on the timing of Politico’s last-minute “revelations.”

After all the commotion about President Trump and the FIFA intervention, Team USA’s World Cup run ended as Belgium won the Round of 16 matchup to advance. (Also, here.) Ms. Must, who (mea culpa) knows so little about sports that she thought the match was today, cannot comment on President Trump’s intervention. But this headline is funny: “Donald Trump, World Cup Referee.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte makes the case for NATO in a Washington Post op-ed on the eve of the summit. Rutte’s pitch is calculated to appeal to President Trump, as the subtitle makes abundantly clear: “The alliance that has leaned too heavily on U.S. muscle is building its own — and buying American, too.” The president arrives at NATO with a bee in his bonnet about NATO member nations denying the U.S. overflight rights during the Iran conflict. NATO is bracing for President Trump.

It’s interesting that Democrats by and large refuse to talk about socialism (a friendlier term for communism). After all, it’s the Democratic Party that is first on the Democratic Socialist of America gobble-gobble list. A few Democrats will discuss their peril. “My Former Colleagues Are Destroying the Democratic Party,” writes The Free Press’ Evan Barker, a former Democratic operative who once worked with today’s rising socialist stars:

What you’re seeing now is only the beginning.

In the same publication, Stu Smith writes about “The DSA’s Communist Turn“:

A majority of the organization’s governing board openly identifies with Communist ideology. Those who dismiss it as hyperbole should look more carefully.

Meanwhile, Guy Benson introduces us to the “new faces of Mamdanism.”

Much to the horror of Dems who are either naïve or sympathetic to communism, President Trump does talk about the threat. He did so in his Fourth of July pronouncements. Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York writes about “Trump’s anti-communist manifesto.” York writes:

Avila Chevalier has refused to answer the communist question. But darned if  she, too, didn’t include “seize the means of production” on a sort of to-do list she tweeted in 2019. …

So the record is pretty suggestive for Mamdani and Avila Chevalier. But it’s not that way for the other DSA candidates who won recently — Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros, Janeese Lewis-George, and others. On the other hand, all of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the word “socialist” has always been a key part of the vocabulary of communism, in the 20th century and today. So one could say that Trump’s accusation is reasonably true for some of the DSA comrades who have defeated Democratic candidates and at least adjacent to the beliefs of some others. In other words, it’s close enough for a political campaign.

That said, Trump is absolutely on the money about communism, the ideology that led to so much death, deprivation, and destruction in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Communist China, Cuba, and elsewhere. “Communism is a loser, and it always will be,” Trump said in his July 4 speech, the day after he spoke at Mount Rushmore. “Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world. Never works.”

The family of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk came face to face with the accused assassin Monday in a Utah courtroom:

Tyler Robinson, 23, was already in the room before members of the media were allowed in at around 8:55 a.m. He was wearing a gray suit, pink shirt and black tie, with his wrists and ankles cuffed. Later in the hearing, when videos of Kirk’s shooting death were played for the sides and the judge, he showed no visible response when the sound of the fatal gunshot rang out.

Utah State Bureau of Investigation Agent David Hull was on the stand to introduce several videos, including images of Kirk’s death that were not shown publicly in court but were shown to the judge and attorneys for both sides. Two of them were described as showing the moment a sniper’s bullet struck Kirk in the neck, and they included audio that reporters could hear.

Erica Kirk left the courtroom, and the Judge flinched when video showed the moment the bullet hit Charlie Kirk.

Failure Factories: That’s what the New York Post calls New York’s public schools after a devastating analysis:

Welcome to New York’s flunking factories.

Failure in the city’s public education system has become “normalized” — and even bolstered by grade inflation and fixing — with nearly half of schools consistently failing their students, a bombshell new report found.

The sweeping analysis, conducted by the Success Academy Charter Schools network, found that in those 906 public schools, fewer than half of students passed math, reading, or both, on state exams last year.

In total, a staggering 43% of the system’s approximately 912,000 students are in these failing schools, according to the shocking report released Tuesday.

Meanwhile, facing declining public school enrollment, the unions are litigating against SUNY to block a charter school.

“A Conservative Court—Not a Trump Court,” by Ilya Shapiro, is highly recommended:

So, the Supreme Court has become super-Trumpy, right? …

What is going on? Are the justices schizophrenic? Or maybe one or two of them can’t decide whether to go all-in for MAGA or the Resistance?

No, that’s not it at all. You simply can’t view the Court through a political lens, but instead must realize that the justices are looking at legal issues. All nine are doing their best to interpret the Constitution and federal laws faithfully and apply them to the facts of particular cases. There are stark disagreements over what that means, of course—judging isn’t like plugging a question into an AI program—but this isn’t a situation where there are two wings of the Court and then one or two swing votes.

Fear. “The media are still running scared of the trans lobby,” says a Spiked Online headline. It details a piece about trans activism in Girlguiding that nearly didn’t see the light of day.

Forget the Imperial Presidency. It’s the Ubiquitous Presidency. President Trump’s face is slated to appear on passports, money, and a lot of other stuff. It’s branding.

Supreme Court Makes Trump’s Day. ‘Killer Quotes’ from Justice Alito. Iran Droning On? New York Times on ‘Maga Pregnancies.’ Usha Vance Has Last Word. Royals Flee Buckingham Palace. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Good day for President Trump at the Supreme Court yesterday as two important immigration cases were decided. The left not unexpectedly erupted in fury. “White supremacy!” they shouted.

Considerably more measured is the Wall Street Journal’s editorial headlined “Trump, Refugees and the Supreme Court:”

The Supreme Court on Thursday expanded President Trump’s power over immigration—or so the press proclaims. The White House no doubt wishes that were true, but the six conservative Justices merely ruled that judges can’t usurp power that Congress delegated to the President.

At issue in Mullin v. Doe was Mr. Trump’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrian and Haitian refugees. A 1990 law lets the Secretary of Homeland Security provide quasi-legal status to migrants if they can’t safely return to their home countries because of armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

The three liberal Justices claimed racism motivates the Trump administration. Most immediately affected are TPS immigrants from Haiti and Syria. The other immigration ruling, also 6-3, concerned asylum seekers:

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers at the southern border who haven’t yet crossed into U.S. territory.

Why it matters: The Court’s decision resolves a years-long legal fight over a Border Patrol practice when there’s limited bandwidth to process people at a port of entry.

National Review called the rulings “a clean sweep for Trump and written immigration laws.” The asylum case hinges on the meaning of the word “arrived” is. By way of elucidation, Justice Samuel Alito, author of both majority opinions, penned these immortal words:

This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico “arrives in the United States” when he or she is still in Mexico. . . . In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person “arrives in” a place — for example, a house, a city, or a country — before the person enters that place.

A person arrives in a geographic location only when he enters it. . . . Everyday examples confirm that understanding.

In another ruling, the high Court “drove a stake through Hawaii’s ‘Vampire rule’” and delivered a big win for the Second Amendment. WSJ columnist Kimberley Strassel writes that the “restoration of the Second Amendment” began with Justice Clarence Thomas’ “constitutional firepower.”

Don’t miss “Alito Gets Snippy with Sotomayor” and “Killer Quotes” from Alito’s take down of Hawaii’s illegal gun control law. The Court also handed down a 7-2 majority ruling to halt the mass tort attempt to evade federal law on regulating a Monsanto pesticide.

Iran attacked a ship moving through the Strait of Hormuz but traffic continues to flow and oil prices to decline. It was a drone attack on a Singapore flagged ship. Meanwhile, Iranian dissidents are warning the Trump administration against handing regime a ‘victory it could never win on the battlefield’ in peace talks.

Brace yourself for Acting AG Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing. The LA Times’ Jackie Calmes compares Blanche to the rather notorious Roy Cohn, a former Trump lawyer, whom Calmes describes as “no holds barred and reptilian.” Former AG William Barr, however, advocates the confirmation of Blanche:

He is well-qualified and will run the department as well as anyone could under President Trump.

It is well known that the MSM goes after conservative women. The New York Times narrows the attack to pregnant conservative women in a piece headlined “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image.”  Julia Cassidy of Townhall writes:

Amidst their tireless pursuit of conspiring against conservative women, The New York Times published an entire piece titled “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image,” which spent pages droning on about “the power of the pregnancy aesthetic” and how the “MAGA women” (Karoline Leavitt, Usha Vance, and Katie Miller) embody MAGA’s “idealized image of womanhood.”

With a focus on Usha Vance’s recent podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady, the article comments on her form-fitting dress, noting, “She is wearing a stretchy coral dress that hugs her stomach, making what she is talking about very clear.” The comment came after quoting Usha telling her husband, Vice President JD Vance, that he would soon have a new baby to read to. 

Ms. Vance was undaunted, tweeting:

Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks! In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids on Storytime with the Second Lady.

First, They Came for … Kathy Hochul. Yes, New York’s Mamdani endorsing governor. DSA takes aim at Hochul over taxing the rich after red sweep, report says: ‘We’re coming for her’. Meanwhile, Dem Rep. Elise Slotkin responds to the socialist sweep in New York, saying her party “needs new leadership” because the “old models are no longer working.”

But Eddie Scarry of The Federalist argues that Dems aren’t afraid of the commies they are electing but hate losing their jobs.  No doubt ubiquitous Rep. Ro Khanna qualifies as a new model. Good piece on “The Meaning of Ro Khanna” at City Journal:

The California congressman embodies the uneasy place of Indian Americans in progressive racial politics.

Socialism on March. New York City’s Board has approved Mayor Mamdani’s rent freeze for two years. Quite a scene.

Not everything can be new. “The ‘Four I’s’ That Can Wreck Presidencies” is the headline on Matthew Continetti’s column at the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section. “Inflation, Iran, Israel and ineptitude sank Carter, doomed Biden and now threaten Trump,” Continetti argues. He writes further:

Mr. Trump’s fate now depends on Iranian caprice. And not only his fate. As part of the deal, Mr. Trump agreed to constrain Israel’s defense against Hezbollah in Lebanon. He’s gone from treating the Islamic Republic as an enemy, which it is, to dealing with it as a partner. He’s gone from treating Israel as an ironclad ally, which it ought to be, to disciplining it like a nuisance. Just as the economy went from asset to hindrance, Iran and Israel have swapped places.

Summertime. “At this point, the Reflecting Pool deserves an Emmy” a Washington Post s “Style” piece proposes. The author makes a good case for this:

The best show on television or any other screen right now is Reflecting Pool.

If you turn on Fox News, you can watch White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announce that six arrests have been made of individuals who allegedly vandalized Reflecting Pool. If you go to CBS’s social media, you can watch reporter Ed O’Keefe tell President Donald Trump that, actually, there is no evidence of vandals causing a 250-foot gash in Reflecting Pool. The next day, on YouTube, you can watch Trump stand under an umbrella and explain to reporters that, in fact, it’s a 350-foot slit — 100 feet longer than he’d originally claimed — “in the form of lots of little slits” and also, “it’s a shame.”

We Anglophiles are disappointed with this latest desecration. Seems the British royal family will no longer inhabit Buckingham Palace:

The King and Queen will never live at Buckingham Palace, it has been announced, confirming the first change to the monarch’s official residence in almost 200 years.

Clarence House will serve as the King and Queen’s official London residence, while the Palace, currently undergoing a £369m refurbishment, will remain the administrative headquarters of the British Royal family.

Snopes might enjoy His Majesty’s tax returns.

Venezuelan Earthquakes. Mamdani Earthquake: Do Old Guard Dems Know What Hit Them? Testy Trump-GOP Meeting On Hill. Iran. Wacky Wiki. Contrarian Take on an Independent Woman. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

This is a morning to think about earthquakes.

Venezuela faces a difficult recovery from the two historically strong earthquakes that devastated the country after hitting in rapid succession. Up to a hundred are feared dead as President Trump vows to help.

Unlike the people of Venezuela, the Democratic Party doesn’t quite seem to understand what hit them. The Mamdani Earthquake, which hit full force in New York on Tuesday, is historic.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal (“The Socialist Democrats of America”) explores the meaning of the “Mamdani left” on the Democratic Party and the country at large:

It’s tempting to dismiss Tuesday’s primary sweep by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as an artifact of weird New York City. It is that, but also more. The victories by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s slate of leftists will change the Democratic Party—and perhaps the politics of the country…

This shows the DSA is highly organized and can get out the vote of the young progressives who have replaced the white centrist voters who have fled New York.

It’s hard to overstate how far to the left the Mamdani slate is. Aber Kawas, who won the primary for a state Senate seat, has said she found it “reprehensible” to apologize for 9/11 when America hasn’t apologized for its “system of capitalism, and racism and white supremacy.” We guess she won’t be going to the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero…

Another reason for the socialist rise is that mainstream liberals put up so little resistance. Like other Democrats, Mr. Espaillat shares the socialist left’s goals but wants to get there more gradually. This is a feeble answer when angry voters want immediate progress. The defeated Democrats in New York refused to make principled arguments against socialism or the antisemitism of the Mamdani left.

After Tuesday they may offer even less resistance. 

Only 7 per cent of registered voters turned out, mostly young and white. The New York Post calls them “The Young and the Clueless.”  The situation presents “a governing nightmare” for Democrats, according to an editorial in the Washington Post. City Journal notes that the Mamdani socialists are prepared to storm Congress. This should be a “jolt for complacent Democrats.” A Wall Street Journal Free Expression calls the Mamdani socialists “The Radicals Inside the Tent:”

Mainstream Democrats hope far-left insurgents will settle down after arriving in Washington. They’re in for an ugly surprise.

Columnist Hugh Hewitt writes that the current situation stems from the the Obama years:

This is the third act in a three-act tragedy.

First, former President Barack Obama’s achievement-free eight years atop the country and the Democratic Party saw a generation of federal, state and local Democratic youngsters get wiped out in the political earthquakes of 2010, 2014 and 2016. Obama always took care of himself, but left the party to the ossified care of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer to collectively run, and they ran it aground.

Trump Derangement Syndrome, which consumed Democrats, Hewitt asserts “left the party without a platform or a leader of any ability or charisma who wasn’t also eligible for Social Security.” Part three was the “passing of the baton” from Senator Bernie Sanders to the energetic AOC.

Mamdani socialists are hostile to the state of Israel and Jews in general. This leaves Commentary editor John Podhoretz to observe that “We’re in a Waking Nightmare.” Mark Halperin writes about “How Israel Became the Biggest Litmus Test in American Politics.” It has to do with bad ideas.

It wasn’t quite an earthquake, but President Trump stunned Republicans yesterday when at the last minute he cancelled the signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill. The President says he won’t sign the popular housing bill until Congress passes the Save America Act (which would require an ID to vote). If a bill passed by both the House and Senate is ignored and not signed within ten days, it automatically becomes law. It’s unclear what Trump plans to do. A Wall Street Journal editorial says Trump was right not to sign the Elizabeth Warren backed housing bill, even though he did so for what the editors believe is the wrong reason.

But the President still turned up for a scheduled meeting with Capitol Hill Republicans, which did not go smoothly:

President Trump’s meeting with Republican senators on Wednesday turned testy, and at one point, he sternly told Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy to sit down, after questions arose about the War Powers Resolution, according to sources directly familiar with the meeting. 

Cassidy had been trying to respond to the president, telling the president he should sit down — but Cassidy later relented, saying he would be seated, but not at Mr. Trump’s behest. …

The more-than-hourlong meeting with Mr. Trump focused mostly on the Iran war and the War Powers Resolution. On Tuesday, the Senate approved a Democrat-led resolution to keep the president from ordering further military action in Iran. Four Republicans voted in favor of the concurrent resolution, which is symbolic and does not carry the force of law.

Senator Cassidy lost his Senate primary for the GOP nomination to a Trump-backed opponent. Key Republican Senators switched their votes after the meeting, causing the war powers resolution to fail.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose miserable demeanor while President Trump outlined the Iran deal has been much remarked upon, is traveling among our Gulf allies. Amid deep Israeli dissatisfaction with the deal, Rubio this morning assured Gulf allies that a Hormuz toll or fees just won’t happen.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance is touting “our new relationship with Iran,” which Sohrab Ahmari in turn touts at Unherd. Larry Kudlow also touts the Iran agreement as “Neither Neocon or Obama–and It Is Working.” An op-ed in the WSJ warns the administration not to help Iran prop up its terror proxy Hezbollah. Karl Rove in the same outlet takes stock of the political peril for a deal with Iran.

Our friend Emily Jashinsky writes that Trump’s fraud crackdown is an easy win. To that point, Fox Digital reports on a Michigan childcare provider that collected $1.1M in taxpayer funds despite no visible signs of operating. There were no children anywhere to be found.

It’s so unfair when somebody gets a stiff prison sentence just for killing an innocent person. I mean, c’mon. Kirsten Fleming documents the “Free Karmelo” movement:

It’s been two weeks since Karmelo Anthony was found guilty of murder, and the lies keep rolling out….

I’ll give [Sunny] Hostin this: She and her “View” crew aren’t as bad as the ghouls posting AI images of themselves urinating on [teen-aged murder victim] Metcalf’s grave. Nor are they as depraved as the disgusting teens on TikTok doing the “Austin Bop,” where they dance around pretending to stab themselves in the heart.

Shorts …

You likely remember the horrific photo of a girl being napalmed in Vietnam. Who really took the photo? New doc explores alleged AP coverup of real photographer of Vietnam’s most horrifying image.

Wacky Wiki. It doesn’t help to promote balance and fairness at Wikipedia:

Left-leaning website Wikipedia has taken the drastic action of permanently blocking one of its founders from editing pages — after he had campaigned to make it more balanced and fair.

Last month, Larry Sanger launched WikiProject Intellectual Diversity (WID), a group designed to help reinforce the online encyclopedia’s “original, firm commitment to intellectual diversity,” by emphasizing neutrality and transparency.

Refreshingly Contrarian. “Great Americans: The Strange Dependence of an Independent Woman” is the headline on a Free Press entry into a series. The subject is Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who at 16 was thrust into running her family’s vast properties:

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722–1793) is an ideal figure to help us think through the meanings of independence. She forged a far more independent life than what we might imagine was possible for an 18th-century woman. Yet her life also reveals that no one, at any time, lives a truly independent life, whether a founding father or a 21st-century American.

Socialists Paint New York Red. Big Winner Says: Forgot My Napkins So I’ll Wipe My Dirty Hands on American Flag. Scott Bessent: Hamilton! Freddy Hearts U.S. Sad Guthrie Update. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

New York, New York: It’s Mamdani’s town.

A “socialist earthquake” in New York has left “Democrats reeling” as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s three chosen candidates swept to victories last night in New York’s Democratic primaries:

Progressive allies of Zohran Mamdani swept through New York’s primaries Tuesday, handing defeats to mainstream Democrats in deep-blue congressional districts and boosting the New York City mayor’s standing as a kingmaker in the party.

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander ousted incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in a race that centered on Israel and the war in Gaza. State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, members of the Democratic Socialists of America, defeated Democratic candidates endorsed by establishment leaders. …

All of the candidates endorsed by Mamdani have called for the dismantling of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and want additional housing and other measures to make life affordable for working families. They are also highly critical of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza.

One of the Mamdani Three, Darializa Avila Chevalier, whose defeat of Rep. Adriano Espaillat practically assures a win in November, has a history of virulently anti-America rhetoric, having called the United States “a f—–g disgrace”:

Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, is a community organizer who studied at Columbia University where she was known for leftist agitation and her membership in a group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest that would later post “Death to America” on its social media.

Avila Chevalier, who positioned herself further to the left than powerful progressives including former Vice President Kamala Harris, has faced scrutiny for her stance on private property, police, borders and calls to nationalize large swaths of the private sector in now-deleted posts from 2018 to 2022.

“I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me,” she reportedly said.

Last night was a win or the radical, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party. The New York Post dubs it the “Hate Slate.” The Free Press’s Peter Savodnik and Olivia Reingold:

On Tuesday, radical House candidates won big in the city. ‘It doesn’t feel safe to be Jewish anymore.’

Townhall’s Matt Vespa has the tweets. Here’s one from David Marcus:

Decades of black and Hispanic political power in New York City were just seized by Muslim Marxists.

Dream Dies. In other New York election news, National Review’s Jeffrey Behar notes that “Alas, there will be no Kennedy resurgence in the Democratic Party,” as JFK grandson Jack Schlossberg lost his bid for Jerry Nadler’s old seat. Also looser: Anti-Trumper George Conway, in the same silk-stocking district. AOC’s win was never in doubt.

Alan Wilson, boosted by last-minute Trump endorsement (he also endorsed the other candidate), win the GOP primary for Governor of South Carolina.

Here’s something that’s not going to be popular with New York’s new Socialist leaders: A Federal appeals court yesterday ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s efforts to fast-track deportations for illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, alleged Antifa members received decades-long prison sentences from a federal Judge in Texas for violent anti-ICE protests.  Several received sentences as long as 100 years. Even with probation ….

I don’t believe this: Iran is trying to promote the incredible idea that ordinary women, without their headscarves, are taking to the streets on their own initiative to rally for the regime. But I do believe this: More of Iran’s brave women are taking the risk of ignoring the regimes hijab rules. The ink on the Iran deal wasn’t even dry on the deal before the regime ordered 74 lashes for this female singer.

Many Israeli leaders are hopping mad at President Trump for the way the Jewish state was treated in the Iran deal. There is also widespread consternation about Iran’s alleged scourge of “jellyfish” drones:

The unsettling swarm of drones that a downed US pilot in Iran said moved in a bizarre “jellyfish-like” formation indicates the Iranian regime has devoted significant resources to beefing up its drone program — so it can counter the conventional battlefield tech of its rivals.

“They are adapting faster than us,” Brett Velicovich, drone expert and founder of Powerus, told The Post.

“Iran has spent years developing capabilities designed to offset the overwhelmingly conventional advantages of the United States and its allies.”

President Trump “took bold actions other Presidents never dared,” write Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh in the Wall Street Journal, but Iran has plans to consolidate its power.

Forget the Song and Dance. Unlike the cast of Lin Manuel Miranda play about Alexander Hamilton, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doesn’t sing and dance about the Founding Father. But I’d be more inclined to take seriously Bessent’s WSJ piece headlined “Hamilton Inspires Trump’s Economic Statecraft:”

First, economic security begins with national capacity. We have rediscovered at great cost what Alexander Hamilton taught us: that every nation “ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply.” Our strength is derived from what we can build, for the nation that can’t produce what it needs isn’t truly secure. The nation that depends on its adversaries for critical inputs isn’t truly sovereign. And the nation that reduces its economics to consumption isn’t truly prosperous.

As Hamilton put it, we must enlarge “the sphere of our domestic commerce.” Economic security begins with the capacity to build, invent, finance and scale the industries that will define the next century, among them semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, critical minerals and pharmaceuticals. More than economic sectors, these are sources of national power. The U.S. must lead in all of them.

Ms. Must mentioned yesterday the education miracle New Orleans pulled off by going all charter schools. We’ll have none of that success stuff, say teachers’ unions honchos Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle. An editorial at the WSJ:

On Tuesday the heads of the nation’s two largest teachers unions delivered their marching orders to the country’s 24 Democratic Governors: Don’t opt into the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, or suffer their political wrath….

Money has been pouring into public schools for decades even as student learning falls. Schools hire more staff to pad union ranks, but students who graduate often can’t read or do middle-school math. Many states and cities also have “hold harmless” policies that keep schools funded as students leave. See New York City, which is spending $290 million to make sure schools don’t lose money next year even as they lose tens of thousands of students.

We’re Sorry We Killed Your Mom. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie spoke about her family’s “agony” over her mother’s disappearance and shared information about a “chilling ransom note. The apparent abductors said that Mrs. Guthrie died in their care but it was an accident and they are sorry.

For He Knows His Time Is Short. Controversial Acting DNI chief Bill Pulte already has indulged in a firing spree. It’s always good to keep busy, even if you’re a temp, no?  

Somebody Forgot to Tell Him We’re Fascists. Nicole Russell, whose work usually appears in USA TODAY, takes to Human Events to write about the German soccer fan who is showing us what loving America is all about:

EzoicJust a few weeks shy of America’s 250th birthday, I’d hoped to see a surge of patriotism among Americans nationwide and in Texas where I live, I have. But I’ve also been delighted to see it from another surprising source: Europeans tourists.

There’s a German soccer fan who’s caught the country’s attention and whose patriotism and excitement for all things Americana has warmed my heart. His wide-eyed fervor for America provides a lesson for all of us, a we inch closer to July 4.

“Freddy,” posting as @FreddyLA7 on X, came to the U.S. to follow Germany’s World Cup progress, but his account quickly went viral for the enthusiasm he’s shown for America’s sights, sounds, scenes and food. And he’s not the only one. Frenchmen, Englishmen, and others have been sharing their love of this country after finding themselves in various World Cup locations.

Minimum Wage Fail. John Stossel notices:

Lots of people like gig work. It’s flexible. You work when you want to work.

But “workers’ rights” activists and governing socialists don’t like that. Gig workers rarely join unions. They don’t get a minimum wage.

“Uber and Lyft exploit their workers” is a headline at MS NOW. “We can’t ignore it.”

The Democratic Socialists said they had a solution. Seattle’s city council imposed a $26 delivery driver minimum wage.

What could go wrong?

Mullah Moolah. Bad Feelings. Primary Races: Will Mamdani Proteges Paint the Town Red? New Orleans School Miracle. Something Was WEIRD in WaPo Report on Kavanagh’s Would-Be Assassin.

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

Seems the Trump administration’s Iran deal has ushered in an Era of Bad Feelings.

Take the usually Trump-friendly New York Post, which this morning runs its second brutal Iran deal cover. “Easy Mullah,” shrieks the headline, as a grinning Mullah counts his moolah. That’s because the U.S. is dropping sanctions for two months, which will give Iran a payday of up to $10 billion, no pallets needed.  

“Bad Feelings All Around After Iran Deal” is the headline on Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York’s column:

The United States and Israel are mad at each other. At home, supporters of President Donald Trump‘s decision to go to war are mad at him over the peace deal. Trump’s critics are happy the war might be coming to an end but mad at Trump for starting it. As far as the general public is concerned, a new CBS News poll found that 78% of those surveyed want the war to end now, while just 22% said it should continue “until Iran gives up more.”

On the U.S. side, no amount of talking can get around the fact that what began as a military attack that top American officials said had four goals — prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, destroy its ballistic missiles, sink its navy, and end its ability to arm proxies — ended, despite making great progress toward those goals, as a desperate effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and limit damage to the global economy. In the end, the only really concrete parts of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran were about the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade. …

When things go wrong and frustration mounts, people start pointing fingers at each other, even if they are ostensibly on the same side. Bad feelings spread. That’s where things are now.

A Wall Street Journal report “parsed President Trump’s shifting rhetoric on Iran War,” while an editorial in the same paper notes that moolah is indeed already flowing to the mullahs even at this early stage.  Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Iran says it won’t allow inspections of its damaged nuclear sites.

In “Anatomy of a Gamble,” Jonathan Spyer argues in Middle East Forum that Iran has emerged from the deal strengthened on a strategic level:

It is difficult from all this not to draw the conclusion that the US Administration entered the war on February 28 without a proper analysis of what the Iranian regime was, and of its strengths and weaknesses. The president was correct, as he often noted, that Iran has little left by way of a navy. “Their navy is totally gone – 100 per cent” he told Fox News recently. “The air force is totally gone – 100 per cent.”

The problem with this is that the particular strengths possessed by the Iranian regime are not located in the field of conventional air or sea power. The regime in Tehran is an Islamist, ideological gathering, engaged in a ‘forever war’ of its own, of society against society, rather than army against army. Its practical successes both in retaining power in Iran and in building influence and strength from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean derive from its ability to mobilise (mainly but not only) Shia Muslim loyalties and commitments, and to use these as the engine for political and paramilitary mobilization.

Guy Benson suggests it might be better to walk away from the deal, while Victor Davis Hanson, historian of warfare ancient and modern, argues that the memorandum of understanding is not a surrender or the beginning of a new era but rather the next stage of a strategy built on pressure, deterrence, and avoiding another costly Middle East war.

Paint the Town Red. Will three socialists candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani prevail in three closely watched primaries today in New York? The most watched of the three races race is New York’s 13th District. National Review explains (“Zohranism Looks to Expand Its Reach”):

But of course, few Mamdani-endorsed candidates can compare to the magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier, running in New York’s 13th district (Harlem and parts of the Bronx) and challenging not merely any random incumbent, but Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Adriano Espaillat. Chevalier, a Democratic Socialist, recently made the news for being so gung-ho pro-Hamas in her sympathies that she refused to even condemn the violence of the October 7 massacre. But that’s probably less troubling than her completely sincere — to the point of madness — belief in prison abolition. Needless to say, she’s at even odds to knock off Espaillat tonight.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “The Rise of the Democratic Socialists” editors take note of socialist control of big cities and gains in Congress. Amazing but Israel is a big issue tonight. The Zo has outdone himself by branding the pro-Israel AIPAC “monsters.” A New York Post editorial observes that “Mamdani takes the Jew-hate all the way to 11.”

Tonight we’ll also learn the electoral fate of Jack Schlossberg—John Bouvier Kennedy Schosberg, to give the lad his due—who is running for retiring New York Congressman Jerry Nadler’s capacious old seat.

So far, the only tears shed over the fall of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer seem to be the ones he choked back during his resignation remarks. “Mr. Sensible Keir Starmer bowed to the left and made the UK an unholy mess — a stern warning to Democrats,” suggests Brandon O’Neill in the New York Post.

Philly’s ultra progressive DA Larry Krasner “found out” something, according to GW law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley—what Krasner found out was that he was going too far for even liberal judges in granting new trials to people who had committed serious crimes—murder, for example—without sufficient reason that another trial is justified.

Ms. Must, daughter of the south, has been heartened by the recent spate of stories about southern states turning around failing public schools. The latest is Paul Vallas’ City Journal piece about the nearly all-charter public school system instituted in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina:

The latest Education Scorecard, produced by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth, places Louisiana near the top nationally for growth between 2022 and 2025: second in reading improvement, third in math, and the only state to exceed its pre-pandemic performance in both subjects. New Orleans was the state’s most important reform laboratory.

This is all the more remarkable because Louisiana sits in the bottom third of states in per-pupil funding—about $17,300 per student, some $2,600 below the national average. The city thus rebukes the familiar claim that bad results mainly reflect inadequate funding. Institutions and incentives matter more than money spent.

Before the hurricane, New Orleans ran some of the worst schools in America. …

This plays to one of my pet peeves—that spending more on failing schools is not the way to ix them. Don’t get me wrong. Teachers deserve good salaries. The teachers in my family were dedicated and prepared to teach. But a lot of the lavish spending turns out to be for administrators.

I couldn’t get over the feeling that something was … wrong, as I read this Washington Post story on the would-be assassin of Justice Brett Kavanaugh:

From her home in California, 26-year-old Sophie Roske figured out Kavanaugh’s address in suburban Maryland. She bought a gun, practiced shooting and acquired lock-picking tools, black face paint and a laser sight. After packing her gear into a suitcase she checked at the airport, Roske flew cross-country and took a cab to the justice’s home, arriving just after 1 a.m.

Wasn’t the attempted assassin a man? It is not until after twenty—twenty—or so paragraphs that we find this:

Roske was named Nicholas Roske at birth and raised as a boy in a Southern California family active in a large Evangelical church. (Roske was identified by her name at birth in earlier coverage of the case.) Roske reached the rank of Eagle Scout, earned a philosophy degree Cal State Northridge and began to transition to a woman. “Sophie’s depression remained unresolved at least in part due to her gender dysphoria, which was not being addressed by her treatment,” Boardman said from the bench.

Roske wasn’t just “raised as a boy.” Roske was a boy and is a man today. Shame on the Washington Post! Similarly, as I noted yesterday, Father’s Day [was] one more opportunity to promote transgender ideology at the New York Times, which James Freeman covers today.

Look into the Reflecting Pool. Downing Street Cat Larry Seeks New Manservant. Hot Time in Switzerland. NYT Celebrates Father’s Day with ‘Trans’ Dad Essay. Rise of Socialism. More

Posted on by Charlotte Hays

 

Talk about seeing your own image reflected in a pool of water …. Some jerks are overjoyed that the iconic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is threatened by algae just in time for America’s 250th birthday:

A small group of activists who called themselves “Team Algae” — including a member dressed as a purple frog — took up position in front of the Lincoln Memorial, cheering on the algae as a symbol of resistance to the Trump administration.

Jon and Shelly Wiseman, a retired couple who walked down to the reflecting pool from their home in Northwest Washington, called the paint job “basically a vanity project” for the president.

President Trump, as you may recall, spent a lot of money repairing the Reflecting Pool and painting the bottom “American flag blue” to be ready for July 4. Unfortunately, the renovation appears to have been unsuccessful. I know a Trump hater who is filled with vicious glee. Several people, including Olympian David Hearn, have been arrested for alleged vandalism at the Reflecting Pool. Hearn denies the charge. An increasingly frustrated President Trump alleges vandalism, writing on Truth Social that vandals had thrown a destructive chemical into the pool.

I was surprised that Maureen Dowd, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and DC native, wrote this (“Creature from the Green Lagoon”) yesterday:  

To give Trump his due, the capital needed freshening up in many spots, and he’s the first president in a while to restore beautiful statues and fountains that had fallen into disrepair. …

Surprisingly generous. She added, however:

Even when Trump starts with a glimmer of truth — that many iconic spots in D.C. had been allowed to shamefully deteriorate — he goes overboard in such a Trumpian way that he often ends up making things worse.

Meanwhile, the Reflecting Pool reflects the sad divisions of America 250.

A visibly emotional UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned. The Washington Post reports:

Starmer’s surrender came fast on the heels of a special parliamentary election in Makerfield on Thursday, in which Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham won a decisive victory, returning him to the House of Commons and positioning him to mount a Labour Party leadership challenge that Starmer seemed all but certain to lose.

History lecturer Richard Johnson writes in Unherd:

Starmer’s premiership has been an extraordinary political failure. He has squandered a historic majority. He has trashed the reputation of his party. He leaves little by way of policy legacy. Trust in politics under his premiership has sunk further still. And what was it all for?

When Starmer once said “there is no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be,” he was right, except in the narrowest sense: Starmerism was always about Keir Starmer. There was no doctrine, policy program, or tradition. The Starmer project was simply an effort to make him prime minister.

Spiked Online dubs putative successor Andy Burnham just Keir Starmer in jeans:

Labour doesn’t have a Keir Starmer problem. It has a Labour problem. It is organisationally and ideologically estranged from its working-class support base.

Labour may be planning a Burnham Koronation. U.S. Dems could tell them the pros and Kams of this.

And now our attention turns to the real Master of 10 Downing Street, Larry the Downing Street Cat, who welcomes world leaders and is now taking applications for his seventh new manservant. Here’s someone who aspires to serve Larry.

Vice President Vance and Iranian officials spent the weekend negotiating over nuclear issues in Switzerland, with the Iranians apparently dismissing President Trump’s Strait of Hormuz threats as bluffing. Iran has stepped up the hanging of dissidents. Axios describes the situation as “messy.”

Two opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal tackle President Trump’s and Vance’s recent verbal attacks on U.S. ally Israel. “Iran and Trump Blame Israel First” is the headline on an editorial:

President Trump’s new era of Middle East peace is off to a rocky start, as Iran declared Saturday it has again closed the Strait of Hormuz. But at least the Trump Administration and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps agree on the culprit—Israel.

Vice President Vance was even more threatening….

“Donald Trump and JD Vance Echo the Anti-Israel Left” is the headline on Allysia Finley’s column.” She sees the specter of Tucker Carlson. Gatestone Institute has several takes on the deal, mostly negative. Also at Gatestone, Amir Taheri has an interesting dissent. “Tehran Is Poised to Overplay Its Hand” writes Nate Swanson in Foreign Affairs. This Just In: Iran’s Delegation appears to have walked out. But by lunch they may be back. Who knows?

But They Still Won’t Put Their “In Fauci We Trust” T-shirts in Mothballs. On the way out the door, former DNI Tulsi Gabbard releases documents that apparently “reveal evidence of U.S. taxpayer-funded global biolab program.” “The Anthony Fauci, COVID-19 origins cover-up runs ‘deep’ into our intelligence community,” writes Miranda Devine.

The End of Innocence. The New York Times observed Father’s Day with a laudatory Guest Essay about a “trans” Dad:

The New York Times is facing backlash after publishing a Father’s Day guest essay about a transgender parent who described learning how to be a “trans dad.”

The essay, titled “To My Daughter, My Gender Was Never Complicated,” was published Sunday morning and presented in comic-strip form. It was written by Zach Ellams, a biological woman who identifies as a male, and focuses on Ellams’ experience raising a daughter while navigating questions about gender….

In another scene at a pool, the child asks, “How did you grow a mustache if you were a lady?”

A separate panel shows the daughter on a playground telling another child, “I want to grow a beard when I grow up.”

“You can’t grow a beard. You’re a girl,” the other child replies.

“My dad did, and he was a girl,” Ellams’ daughter says.

The essay suggests the child accepts Ellams’ gender identity with ease, helping the author more fully “embrace” who they are.

This Is Awful, Too. Woke NYC fifth graders pantomime getting shot by cops in outrageous dance routine.

Also awful: Socialism. Megan McArdle has a column in the Washington Post headlined “Socialism is back in vogue. Wait for reality to set in.” She writes:

It has never been a better time in America to be a socialist. We aging Gen Xers who thought that socialism had been decisively refuted by the fall of the Berlin Wall have been refuted ourselves: Democratic socialists now run Seattle and New York City, and come January, probably D.C. too, where Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary that generally decides the district’s mayoral elections.

It is a heady moment for the left, because socialism’s tainted brand has recovered from the vivid failures of the Soviet Union. Fully 66 percent of Democrats tell Gallup they view socialism favorably, while 42 percent say the same of capitalism. This makes the left see a revolution marching toward victory, because it can promise something that the center left cannot: a disruptive break with an unsatisfying status quo….

The challenge is that socialism’s rise is spiky, concentrated in blue cities where affluent (but often downwardly mobile) college graduates cluster. That’s a problem for the Democratic Party, where the excesses of progressive governance are helping to make the party’s brand toxic in the less true-blue areas. But it’s also a challenge for the socialists, because cities are the hardest place to execute big plans for new taxing and spending.

Mollie Hemingway said on Fox that the rise of socialism is a consequence of former President Barack Obama’s leadership for the past 15 years:

What Mamdani is talking about there is a very real thing that the Democratic Party went through, really when they decided in 2008 to support Barack Obama.

Prior to that, Bill Clinton had been the leader of the party. Yes, he was on the left but center-left. He was able to reposition if he felt he had gone too far or if the public reacted.

With the election of Barack Obama — and there’s no confusion about it, Barack Obama runs the Democratic Party now — you’re seeing more and more of this type of extremism.

With President Obama and earlier followers, they would hide their radicalism. Now it’s out there in the open, and in really blue districts, you’re seeing they’re letting the freak flag fly about what they’re going to do.

Two Veep Reviews. Catholic intellectual Robby George’s review of Vice President Vance’s new book is very different from Barton Swaim’s also excellent review.