shutdown Archives

Bombs: Fertility Bombs & Iran Bombs. Kings Are Okay: Politico Declares Pritzker a Kingmaker. York Declares Shutdown ‘Insane’. SAVE Update & More

Posted on March 18, 2026March 18, 2026 by Charlotte Hays

We’ll get to the Iran war but let’s be daring and start today with the war on babies. You know, those critters who consume time and planetary resources.

Oscar Best Actress Jessie Buckley’s touching and unexpected tribute to the joy if motherhood served as the bookend to the death of a an influential intellectual whose powerful message was (I’m sort of boiling it down): Don’t have babies! You’ll mess up the planet!

It’s impossible to exaggerate the influence of Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb”(1968). I suggest that Ehrlich single-handedly started the trend of women agonizing over whether to bring babies into this world. Unherd’s farewell to Ehrlich, who has died at the age of 93, is headlined “The Professor Who Hated Babies.” Eliot Haspel writes:

Ehrlich was catastrophically wrong, of course: since the book’s publication, the global population has swelled by nearly 5 billion, and no worldwide famine ensued. Ehrlich simply misunderstood the forces at play….

Even so, his ideas inspired millions of forced sterilizations in India, Peru, and other countries. Americans and Europeans, meanwhile, live with a more diffuse fallout: it is exceedingly difficult to have a productive conversation about birth rates despite the US fertility decline reaching historic levels, and nations like Italy and Spain facing rates so low that each successive generational cohort will be around half the size of its predecessor. …

Without an intentional effort to clean up the damage wrought by The Population Bomb, it will be nearly impossible to have a needed national conversation about births, and how we can create the conditions for as many people as possible to form the families they want, which, for many Americans, are larger than they actually have.

Ehrlich, in short, found teeming human life itself repulsive, and the lives of the poor, especially, as unworthy to live.

The New York Times obit (linked above) called Ehrlich “prescient,” but his other sendoffs have been less flattering. A Washington Post editorial is headlined “Paul Ehrlich Has Died. His Shock Waves Remain.” “The dire predictions in ‘Population Bomb’ are thoroughly discredited but still causing damage,” the Editors argue. “Ehrlich Was Wrong” is the succinct headline of a Corner item by National Review Editors. “Paul Ehrlich Was Wrong—but He Still Changed the World” is the Free Press headline over a piece by Matt Ridley. And in the same outlet, Larissa Philips recounts her harrowing narrow escape in “I Almost Didn’t Survive ‘The Population Bomb’” which describes how her hippie parents dashed their hippie dream by having her (but they never regretted it).

Thanks to Jessie Buckley for carrying her countercultural message into the very Valley of the Woke. She is prescient.

The fabulous New York Post cover this morning is a pretend classified ad: “Help Wanted: New Iran Leader.” You’ve probably already heard that actuarial charts for Iranian leaders have taken a turn for the worse with the dispatch to virgin land of two top leaders. But the Supreme leader survives (apparently). If I were the sort of person (sniff, sniff) who says LOL, that’s what I’d say for this Washington Free Beacon headline:

Supremely Progressive: Iran Becomes First Nation in World History Led by Gay Amputee

Unlike the Free Beacon headline, this New York Times headline is not funny: “Joe Kent, a Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official, Resigns Over the Iran War.” Your first reaction might be that—oh my gosh—the administration is turning on itself! I can’t help but believe the headline writer would not be averse to this. But read down to paragraph ten-ish:

“Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Mr. Carlson said in a brief interview. “He’s leaving a job that gave him access to highest-level relevant intelligence. The neocons will now try to destroy him for that. He understands that and did it anyway.”

In other words, it is hardly surprising that Kent takes a dim view of the conflict. He is also described as a conspiracy theorist. National Review, which has been supportive of the Iran conflict, responded to Kent’s resignation this way: “Good Riddance.” In his resignation letter (also printed in the New York Times), Kent recalled that he is both a veteran and a Gold Star husband, who “lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.”

While taking pains to describe Kent as a “beloved figure” and honoring his and his wife Shannon’s military service, Laura Ingraham and Joe Bongino pushed back on his criticisms of the Iran war.

In other Iran headlines, the New York Post suggests Iran currently is being run by hardliners who will beget other hardliners. Israel is escalating attacks in Lebanon as Iran strikes near Tel Aviv. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hopes strikes on Iran will inspire Iranians to overthrow their bloody regime. President Trump remains unhappy about the weak response from allies. Jamie McIntye writes at the DC Examiner that “jilted Trump will “lay the groundwork” to divorce NATO.

Giddy Politico headline: “King of Illinois: Pritzker swings Senate race as he targets Trump.” Governor JB Pritzker’s kingmaker status is awarded because he weighed in (no jokes) on Lt. Gov. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won the Democratic Senate primary. Enquiring Minds Want to Know: Will Stratton curb the distinctive use of the all too frequent F-word in her ad campaign now that she’s hit the big time?

In a column headlined “There’s Only One Thing Voters Dislike More than Democrats,” USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jaques argues that if the Dems hope to revamp their image before the midterms, they need to hit the brakes on its hard left turn. Jaques leads off with the Stratton F-Bomb ads. (I seem to have bombs on the brain this morning ….)

The Federalist does not seem overly optimistic about the immediate future of the SAVE America Act (which would impose on Americans the draconian burden of having IDs to vote). The Federalist predicts that as the act is debated in the Senate, we will witness “wall-to-wall Democrat lying and RINOs squirming in their seats at the thought of working more than two days a week.”

The Federalist, however, sees a glimmer of light in the fact that the act is finally being debated on the floor of the Senate—that’s a March Madness miracle in and of itself. Election law lawyer Joe Burns writes at The Hill that in the SAVE debate Democrats are being total hypocrites.

“The insane government shutdown” that has some DHS workers on the job without pay in a time of heightened danger is the subject of Examiner Chief Political correspondent Byron York today. He writes:

So far, nearly all TSA workers are staying on the job, but an estimated 300 have left TSA, and more will likely follow. Those staying on will be highly stressed. And on top of that, they will be required to deal with a threat situation that, because of world events, could be much more hazardous than usual.

This is crazy. In order to fund TSA and other agencies, Democrats demand that the Trump administration make “dramatic changes” in the way ICE operates. Among the Democrats’ demands are that ICE agents stop wearing masks, start wearing bodycams, and obtain judicial warrants for many of the cases they handle.

Cuba is experiencing all sorts of problems that open the doors for cooperation with the U.S.—and perhaps even the fall of a regime that has brought so much suffering to the Cuban people. But guess who else sees opportunity? The Democratic Socialists of America. “Why Is the DSA Making Friends with Communist Cuba?” is the headline on a story at City Journal by Stu Smith. The DSA is making something of a pet out of the designated sponsor of terror, according to Smith:

As the Trump administration ramps up pressure on Cuba, members of the Democratic Socialists of America are not standing on the sidelines. Through delegations to the island, aid campaigns, and high-profile partnerships with commentators like Hasan Piker, the DSA is working to provide both political and material support for the regime in Havana.

DSA’s sustained, national-level focus on Cuba is a relatively recent development. In 2019, after passing a resolution at its national convention, the organization formally joined the National Network on Cuba. The network is an umbrella coalition of left-wing groups committed to opposing U.S. military action, turning American public opinion against the longstanding American embargo, and pressing for a fundamental shift in U.S.-Cuban relations.

Looks like a hawk and dove. Curt Mills of the American Conservative (TAC) tells Christopher Rufo that the current Iran conflict is a mistake, while former CIA officer Martin Gurri writes at the New York Post that Trump’s global endeavors upend the world of impotent elites — and there’s no going back.

Don’t miss “The Amazing Adventures of Hannah the Plumber.” Julie Burchill profiles the Green Party’s newest MP who lives in her own pastel-colored bubble.

Tariffs Get Their Day in Court. Shutdown Forces Air Travel Cut. Emboldened Dems Lovin’ Shutdown Even More. Gender Gap Back. And More

Posted on November 6, 2025November 6, 2025 by Charlotte Hays

What would it mean if President Trump’s tariffs went pouf?

It’s perilous to read much into oral arguments before the Supreme Court, but it’s generally conceded that President Trump’s tariffs had a “tough day” yesterday:

President Trump’s global tariffs ran headlong into a skeptical Supreme Court on Wednesday, with justices across the spectrum expressing doubt that a 1970s emergency-powers law could be read to provide the president unilateral authority to remake the international economy and collect billions of dollars in import taxes without explicit congressional approval.

But even if the court strikes down the tariffs Trump initiated on his self-declared Liberation Day last April, the justices gave little indication how they might unwind the president’s signature economic policy and favorite diplomatic tool. That left unclear whether previously paid duties would be refunded or whether Congress could be invited to step in, perhaps by ratifying the levies retroactively.

“The president needs five votes to win. The math looks challenging,” is the lead-in to the Wall Street Journal’s helpful Justice-by-Justice breakdown based on yesterday’s arguments. Harvard Law Professor and American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Jack Goldsmith gave an enlightening interview on tariffs and the Supreme Court to the New York Times. A tidbit from the interview:

I think that it is fair to say that the justices the government needs to win the case — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — asked the government very hard questions that did express skepticism about important elements of its case. But they also asked the other side very hard questions. I do not think any of these three tipped off their hands definitively. I did not find anything terribly surprising in the questions.

“Trump May Lose Supreme Court Case but Tariffs Will Endure,” is the headline on a Michael Lind piece at Unherd. Lind writes that if the administration loses, it will impose tariffs based on other laws. Justice Amy Coney Barrett received attention for a question she posed:

“Would it be a complete mess?” she asked Katyal, referring to whether businesses might seek refunds for the roughly $90 billion in tariffs already collected, as reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Maybe messes is the theme of the day. Air travel is such a mess that the Department of Transportation has cut air travel at 40 airports because of the government shutdown. The New York Times stresses that it is Trump officials who did this; that’s because we have a Trump administration. This will cut air traffic by 10 percent. It was essential to avoid unnecessary risks to American lives. As for the shutdown, Democrats, emboldened by Tuesday’s election results, are hitting the brakes on ending the longest shutdown in history, according to Axios:

Victory is emboldening the party’s hardliners. Centrist Democrats seem stuck.

“I think it would be very strange if on the heels of the American people having rewarded Democrats for standing up and fighting, we surrendered without getting anything for the people we’ve been fighting for,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Axios today.

At least nine Senate Democrats, including Murphy, are privately urging their colleagues to hold out on the shutdown even longer, sources told Axios.

What a mess.

Republicans had reason to regard Tuesday’s election results as more of a trainwreck than a mere mess. Karl Rove’s politics column today in the Wall Street Journal argues that “voters are frustrated with Trump, but they aren’t about to embrace Mamdani.” Rove writes:

[T]he GOP has to learn that screaming “communist” and “socialist” at run-of-the-mill Democrats doesn’t move even die-hard MAGA voters. Explaining why a Democrat’s policies will raise costs or hurt jobs and offering a constructive, forward-looking agenda is a much better approach. Americans want to know Republicans are making life more affordable, communities safer and the economy stronger….

To turn this around, the White House will need to focus on the economy and the cost of living, speak candidly about challenges, lower expectations, temper the rhetoric, underpromise, overdeliver and stop going too far, like with Immigration and Customs Enforcement roundups at Home Depot.

Fox’s Bret Baier asked President Trump last night in an exclusive interview about a voter who’d voted for him three times but was worried about her cost of living. Charmingly, the President thanked her but then went on to brag about how he had brought down prices. In other words, he ignored her plea that he, “Please do something.” (I loathe quoting this source, but it is the only one I can find,)

President Trump said the blue wave occurred because he wasn’t on the ballot. “Trump Really Was on the Ballot” counters an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The “magnitude of the route” was a “bad omen” for the GOP holding Congress next year, the editors argue. But there’s something else brutal. A colleague of mine took note of the women’s vote from an NBC exit poll. The Gender Gap is back with a vengeance.

Unsurprise of the Week. Mr. Congeniality—aka Zohran Mamdani—doffed the smile long enough to deliver “a graceless, sore” victory speech after wining his race to become Mayor of New York. New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin responds:

Rather than any expression of appreciation, his relentless criticism of his political predecessors and successful New Yorkers sounded like a battle cry coming from the interior of the Trojan Horse.

Without doubt, he was declaring war against President Trump and, by extension, anyone else who has the nerve to oppose our newly crowned ruler.

Especially striking was the fact that Mamdani offered only the back of his hand to the more than 1 million New Yorkers who voted for his opponents.

His dark heart came through loud and clear in his depiction of New York City as something of a modern slave state where a ruling class of landlords, bankers and even neighborhood merchants sucks the life out of everyone else.

New York business leaders will be further dismayed (frightened?) by Mamdani’s naming former FTC Chair Lina Khan as co-chair of his transition team, signaling a progressive agenda. Parents of school-aged kids wasted no time in reaching out for advice about moving. The people who will have Mamdani’s ear include Women’s March co-founder, Linda Sarsour, who once said, “One cannot be a feminist and a Zionist at the same time,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Patrick Gaspard, former head of a Soros organization.

How did Mamdani rise to such eminence? Spiked Online’s Brendan O’Neill dismisses the fond notion that working class people brought Mamdani to power in a post headlined “Zohran Mamdani’s Ivy League intifada:”

The most galling thing about the Mamdani phenomenon is its claim to be a working-class uprising. Mamdani himself says he’ll fight for the working classes, though surely he’ll have to meet some of them first. The global left is gushing over his win as if it were New York’s equivalent of the Paris Commune. What we have here is the staggeringly dishonest co-option of class politics by an over-credentialled emergent elite who will in truth be pursuing their own Bushwick bullshit, not the improvement of the lot of New York’s workers. They cosplay as class warriors because that’s sexier than the reality – that they’re privileged members of an activist class that will cancel you if you say lesbians don’t have penises but love you if you say ‘Destroy Israel’.

This morning’s final mess is The Mess at the Heritage Foundation. This concerns Heritage head Kevin Roberts’ initial response to a question about Tucker Carlson and Roberts’ attempt to clarify. Eliana Johnson of the Free Beacon has a leaked video of the tempestuous staff meeting at the think tank in response to the situation: “EXCLUSIVE: ‘I Made a Mistake’: Heritage Foundation President Apologizes to Staff for Video Refusal to Cancel Tucker Carlson and Throws Shade at Former Chief of Staff.” Meanwhile, Johnson Pere penned an extensive and fascinating treatise on the Heritage Mess at Powerline.

Trump Does the China Shop. Who Are the People Losing Food Assistance? Did We Even Have a President in 2024? Hotty Toddy: Ole Miss TP-USA Rally & More

Posted on October 30, 2025October 30, 2025 by Charlotte Hays

There’s just too much going on today, but here goes….

President Trump’s eagerly anticipated face to face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is over. Was it a success?

Well, we know one fellow who appeared delighted by the outcome:

“On the scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One after leaving the South Korean air base that hosted the nearly two-hour summit.

The Wall Street Journal’s news report emphasizes an immediate cut in tariffs, while the high-stakes rivalry continues. China pledged to crack down on fentanyl. President Trump says that the rare earth dispute is settled. The resolutely anti-Trump New York Times, meanwhile, suggests that President Trump was hoodwinked. Here’s what happened almost immediately after the Xi meeting:

President Donald Trump announced on Oct. 29 that the United States will “immediately” resume nuclear weapons tests, a move he said is needed to ensure the country keeps up with its rival nuclear powers.

In a Truth Social post, Trump touted progress made on nuclear weapons modernization during his first term. But he warned that China’s nuclear weapons buildup will place Beijing’s arsenal on equal footing with the United States and Russia “within 5 years.”

This doesn’t sound like a man who’s been hoodwinked. The anti-nuclear movement has been relatively quiescent in recent years. Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats barely roused it. But, hey, this is President Hitler J. Trump. Prediction: The anti-nuke movement awakens, providing welcome employment for Greta Thunberg.

An editorial in the Washington Post says that the partial government shutdown has dragged on because most Americans have not felt its effects:

That’s starting to change. This weekend, federal food stamps are scheduled to stop going out. Around 42 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program….

The right answer is to reopen the government with a clean funding bill, ideally for a full year, to get food stamps flowing and federal workers back in the office, and then have a debate about ACA subsidies. Democrats openly acknowledge that they refuse to do this because it would mean giving up their leverage. If they persist, it could mean families start to go hungry.

The editorial also claims that open enrollment for health insurance, when people see how costs have risen, will allow Dems to claim that they made their point. This should enable the GOP to make the point that the Affordable Health Care Act was unaffordable and it’s time for real reform. Let’s hope Senators read “6 Reasons Congress Should Let the Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies Expire” in The Federalist before doing anything rash.

Here is a breakdown on who is in danger of losing food stamps by an American Enterprise Institute scholar. Air traffic delays are piling up, and National Review’s John Fund fears a crisis.

If the shutdown ends soon, however, it might be for the simple reason that it’s harming the Democrats more than the Republicans. CNN’s Harry Enten looked at new polls:

You might think, given that the Republicans are in charge of both the House and the Senate, that a government shutdown might actually hurt the Republican brand — but in fact, it hasn’t.

If anything, it’s been helped a little bit. Take a look here — the shift in net popularity versus pre-shutdown. When we’re looking at the Republican Party overall, that brand is actually up two points. That’s within the margin of error, but clearly it hasn’t dropped.

“Biden Autopen Investigator: Playtime Is Over; It’s Time To Prosecute” is the headline on The Federalist’s lead story this morning. Here’s how M.D. Kittle leads off the story:

And now for the stupidest headline of the week (Of course it’s from Politico). “House GOP concludes investigation into Biden’s alleged mental decline.”

Alleged?

“Did America Have a Functioning President in 2024?” is the headline of an Eli Lake story at The Free Press. “A blistering new report from the House Oversight Committee casts doubt on whether President Joe Biden was fit to serve in his last year in office.”

But it gets worse. “Forget the Autopen Fiasco…This Is Joe Biden’s Watergate” is the headline on Townhall’s Matt Vespa’s piece on revelations of a Biden-era FBI effort called Arctic Frost:

Arctic Frost was revealed to be a widespread Biden DOJ spy operation that sought to surveil the activities of a host of conservative organizations. No, scratch that—it was a mass surveillance operation into the conservative movement writ large. And who signed off on these legal actions? Judge James E. Boasberg, who should face impeachment inquiries (via NY Post). …

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday. It was anything but a unified Fed. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that the Fed is “driving in a fog:”

No sooner had Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell handed Wall Street a quarter-point interest-rate cut Wednesday, than Mr. Powell spoiled the party by warning that another cut may not arrive in December. Confused by these mixed signals? So is the Fed….

The Fed’s confusion means it’s time for Mr. Trump to put the Fed out of its misery by announcing an early decision on Mr. Powell’s successor when his term as chairman ends in May. And to choose someone with the credibility, both in the financial markets and at the Fed, to whip the place into shape.

This would send a clearer signal to markets on the way forward, and give voters some more clarity and accountability—in time for next year’s midterms.

Let’s have some fun. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre never faced a hostile press back when she was needed to protest that she could hardly keep up with spry Joe Biden. But no longer. Her New Yorker interview was “a train wreck,” and lefty Politico finds her book tour “non-stop cringe.” MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem:

Her tour is going poorly. In interview after interview, Jean-Pierre perpetually comes across as caught off-guard, unclear of what her core beliefs are and unpersuasive — and she’s taking a bruising on social media for it. This isn’t because she’s bad at speaking; Jean-Pierre has years of experience sparring with reporters as a press operative and campaign adviser.

No, she’s terrible at public speaking. Presicely because she’s had no practice. Reporters treated her with kid gloves. She seems genuinely surprised that her book tour isn’t being treated the same way.

Meanwhile, the strain is beginning to show on New York’s likely next Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, according to Karl Rove’s column headlined “I Want Your Vote, You Bigot.” A new Quinnipiac poll indicates that Curtis Sliwa may be cruising to become an extremely unpopular man.

“Evidence Backs the Transgender Social-Contagion Hypothesis,” by Colin Wright, in the Wall Street Journal, addresses the decline in the number of minors identifying as “transgender:”

I was an academic scientist at Penn State in February 2020, when I became the target of an online mob for tweeting about transgender identity. I shared a link to an article from the Guardian with the accompanying quote: “Sweden’s Board of Health and Welfare confirmed a 1,500% rise between 2008 and 2018 in gender dysphoria diagnoses among 13- to 17-year-olds born as girls.” My commentary was brief: “Two words: social contagion.”

The Turning Point USA rally, with Erika Kirk and Vice President J.D. Vance, at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi last night, was huge. There was a massive crowd.

The Veep and Erika Kirk were great, but, as a native Mississippian, I was thrilled at how nice, intelligent, and aware Ole Miss students (who had a chance to ask the Veep questions a la Charlie) were. So different from the frights on so many American campuses.

Perhaps this is the spot to work in Jason Riley’s excellent column, which I mean to use yesterday, but it slipped through the sieve I use for a mind. Riley explores “The Enduring Success of Piney Woods School,” a historically black boarding academy in Mississippi.