President Trump “wants a speedy end” to the Iran War, but Iran maintains it has no plans for negotiations with the U.S. Hmm. Could it be that Iran—which just lost naval chief who was responsible for closing the Strait of Hormuz—is being a bit unrealistic?
The legacy media in the U.S. isn’t going to explore that notion. However, Allister Heath, the U.K. Telegraph columnist does, writing that Trump hatred is so pervasive among members of the “expert” class that they are underestimating U.S. achievements.
AEI’s Danielle Pletka talks to retired four-star General Jack Keane about President Trump’s endgame in Iran. “They would have to surrender to us in major concessions all the things that we are physically taking away from them to include keeping the Strait of Hormuz open,” General Keane tells Pletka. Meanwhile, Israeli General Yoav Gallant’s Free Press headline is “How to Finish the Job in Iran.” Gallant’s argument:
Iran must be compelled to accept conditions that end its nuclear threat and regional aggression. The way to do that is to seize its greatest choke point: Kharg Island.
Two overlooked angles in the Iran war. Sadanand Dhume writes that the overthrow of the mullah regime in Iran would have a beneficial ripple effect on Muslims worldwide, while Matthew Koenig argues with a U.S. win in Iran could spell the end of rogue states.
“Juries Take the Lead in the Push for Child Online Safety” is the New York Times headline on a story about two expensive verdicts that went against social media giants:
In Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury decided in favor of a plaintiff who had claimed that Meta and YouTube hooked her with addictive features — a verdict validating a novel legal strategy holding the companies accountable for personal injury. And a day earlier in New Mexico, a jury found Meta liable for violating state law by failing to safeguard users of its apps from child predators.
“Big Tech Invincibility Is Over,” says a New York Post headline, while a Wall Street Journal editorial (“The Social-Media Shakedown Begins”) harumphs:
A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday held Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube liable for a 20-year-old woman’s personal troubles. The schadenfreude will be overwhelming—nail the billionaires! But using a novel product liability theory to shake down companies won’t help young people and isn’t a good way to make law.
You really can’t beat Politico’s elegiac description of Congress not doing its job:
An overwhelming sense of frustration and despair has overtaken Congress as lawmakers try to clinch a deal to end a nearly six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security as a previously scheduled holiday recess looms.
An overwhelming sense of frustration looms over Congress, the Congress that won’t end the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (here and here)? The shutdown that leaves us all vulnerable and TSA agents unpaid? That Congress?
There are some people who are trying to help out at our airports. They are called ICE agents. But ICE agents may be the only federal employees the top tier of the left despises (D.C.’s Washingtonian magazine even tells you how to contribute to nonprofits to aid fired federal bureaucrats, who are likeable to the genteel left!).
In a column headlined “The Dems Propaganda of Constant Lies Are Getting Americans Killed” Miranda Devine writes about the “false narratives” that are getting people killed, including attacks on ICE agents:
We see how it works this week as the mendacious trio of Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer claimed in unison that ICE agents helping ease TSA lines at airports this week will “brutalize and kill” you and kidnap your children.
In fact, ICE agents are kindly giving stranded passengers bottles of water, helping with their luggage, and performing tasks that free up TSA workers who have just missed their third paycheck — thanks to the Democrats.
Unlike fired federal bureaucrats, who sat behind desks and had the power to dole out federal grants for, say, drag queen kabuki shows, ICE agents fall on the wrong side of the genteel left sympathy divide. And let’s face it—there’s a whiff of working class about ICE. Not like those sympathetic bureaucrats. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, meanwhile, “will not tolerate” ICE agents wearing masks in her state (they don’t wear masks in the safer airport environment).
Sheridan Gorman, a Chicago college student who allegedly was killed execution-style by an illegal alien, seems to have fallen on the wrong side of the sympathy divide, too. Regarding the murder, Sheridan’s college newspaper issued an apology—for correctly calling the alleged executioner an illegal immigrant. We’re all familiar with a Chicago pol’s “wrong place, wrong time” explanation for Sheridan’s death. Disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who spent time in prison with gangbangers, put forward the theory that the suspect was participating in a gang initiation.
Twofer. Unlike ICE agents and Sheridan Gorman, this person must have fallen on the correct side of somebody’s sympathy divide—he’s illegal and trans—or how else to explain a six-month sentence for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old boy in Manhattan? Well, it’s in Manhattan—that does help explain it.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin falls on the other side of late-night snoot Jimmy Kimmel’s snobbery divide. I mean, my gawd, the man is a plumber:
“Trump’s got a whole new generation of thinkers lined up, including his newly confirmed secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne ‘Chuck Mike Bruce Dave’ Melon — Mullin. Maybe melon’s better,” Kimmel said. “He’s the now former senator of Oklahoma. Before he was elected to the Senate, Markwayne Mullin was a low-level MMA fighter and a plumber. That’s right. We have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now. It worked for Super Mario. Why not Markwayne?”
After his father’s death, when Mullin was 20, the future Cabinet member turned his family’s small plumbing business into a multimillion-dollar concern. Here’s wish Kimmel a broken pipe and leaky faucets.
Adapting a line from the Kamala Harris campaign, columnist Karol Markowicz says, “We’re not going back.” “New York’s Hochul Drove Me to Florida — Now She’s Begging Me to Return. Not Happening” is the headline on a Fox Digital piece by Markowicz:
Hochul said some “patriotic” rich people have stepped up to help fill the state’s budget gap, and that, sure, it’s OK to write her a check. But if you really want to help, Hochul implored her wealthy supporters, “visit Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home, because our tax base has been eroded.”
Hochul sounded annoyed as she delivered that last line, as if it is the fault of her supporters — who are writing her checks to sustain her struggling state — that their wealthy friends have left for sunnier pastures.
Her comments were surprising because, well, Hochul played a large role in forcing those Palm Beachers out in the first place. In 2022, Hochul said, “Just jump on a bus and head down to Florida, where you belong, OK? Get out of town because you don’t represent our values.”
Hochul apparently is also getting cold feet about climate change mandates.
Ya Think? “‘You Lose Your Credibility’: Democrats Warn against Turning a Blind Eye to a Colleague’s Misconduct” is a Politico headline. The colleague is three-term Florida Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces federal criminal charges for alleged multimillion dollar fraud.
Savannah Guthrie gave an anguished interview with her old colleague Hoda Kotb about her mother’s disappearance:
“And to think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night, every night,” she told Kotb. “And in the darkness, I imagine her terror. And it is unthinkable, but those thoughts demand to be thought. And I will not hide my face. But she needs to come home now.”
Oopsie. Ms. Must got carried away with a headline yesterday. I promoted the Democrat who flipped a state legislature seat in Florida to the U.S. Congress in my headline. She is President Trump’s representative in the state legislature, not the U.S. House of Representatives. Speaker Johnson, please forgive me.