 Dear Weekend Jolter, A week has passed since the president of the United States ended the pandemic, committed U.S. forces to defend Taiwan from China, and assured us that inflation is basically fine. Feel that? The oppressive burden of uncertainty lifting? Me neither. The weight of the president's words is on a reliable course toward helium's. As Jim Geraghty observes, his statements and his administration policies frequently "are no more than distant cousins," and the disconnect was made all the more clear the last few days as the above pronouncements amounted to nil IRL. The loosey-goosey loquacity that made Joe Biden a model senator turns out to have hurt his effectiveness as a head of state. His words take up space, they kill time, they parry the occasional tough question — but they are footnotes in his own presidency, while events fill the chapters. His statements don't pass muster with administration staff, let alone voters. Biden said Sunday on 60 Minutes, for the fourth time, that the U.S. would send American troops to defend Taiwan if China attacks. As before, White House staff walked it back and said U.S. policy (which reflects no such commitment) has not changed. A Biden official then denied this amounted to a contradiction and claimed the administration has shown consistency. More trademark consistency: Biden said on the same program that the pandemic is over. Charles C. W. Cooke quickly pointed out that the declaration undermined the administration's stated legal justification for mass student-debt relief. He wasn't the only one to notice. The Washington Post editorial board countered: Mr. Biden has not ended the official pandemic emergency. When the official emergency ends, some 15 million will lose Medicaid coverage; the reason for a student loan repayment pause will end; the rationale for Trump-era border restrictions, still held in place by a court, will disappear. All this policy transition must not be done carelessly or hastily.
It so happens many of us here agree with the president's statement, in the sense that the period of official emergency should be over. But elected Democrats don't actually want that, and, indeed, Biden did not move to convert his words into actions. His press secretary instead clarified on MSNBC that the president was merely trying to convey we're "in a different time" now that the pandemic is "more manageable." If Biden runs again, Charlie offers a winning slogan: "Joe Biden 2024: He Didn't Really Mean That." Biden had also described, in Dominic Pino's characterization, an alternate universe on the economy. While justifiably touting job creation, Biden downplayed inflation, on the grounds that the month-over-month figure did not surge in August (it was 8.3 percent on an annual basis, similar to July's reading). "It's the highest inflation rate, Mr. President, in 40 years," Scott Pelley pointed out. "I got that. But guess what we are? We're in a position where for the last several months it hasn't spiked . . . it's been basically even," Biden replied. I feel your pain, meet: Your pain is imaginary. Don't expect these assurances to change much in the way of public perceptions about the economy, or the underlying reality. Karine Jean-Pierre clarified in the same MSNBC interview that the administration understands how people feel and then touted as an all-fronts panacea the Inflation Reduction Act, the law analysts say has an impact on inflation "statistically indistinguishable from zero." That President Biden's staff routinely clean up for him, and sometimes muddy the waters further, isn't new. Dan McLaughlin noted back in June that the walk-back is becoming the patented dance move of this administration. Biden might say what he thinks, but his tolerance of the mop-up conveys how serious he is about it. He's also saying things, for instance on the deficit, that aren't true, without intervention from staff. Nor should we be shocked. Biden, despite his lemme-give-it-to-you-straight persona, historically has struggled to iron out the fabulist folds whilst giving it to us. His predecessor was worse, having normalized the idea of the post-truth president whose words are subject to insta-revision — indeed, having made this attitude the model for a new generation of Republican office-seekers. "We've now had successive presidencies of policy vacillation and inconstancy," Buckley Fellow Luther Ray Abel laments. But the words of the U.S. president should carry weight. When they don't, it augurs real trouble. Reporter Hedrick Smith, in 1988's The Power Game, wrote that credibility and trust are the most important qualities "in the intangible chemistry of power," above the yardsticks of money and people. Without them, the ability to persuade others disappears. "[Credibility] lies at the heart of political authority," Smith concluded. And so the power vacuum in Washington grows. NAME. RANK. LINK. EDITORIALS The governor of Virginia, with a new education-department policy, says what needed to be said: Youngkin Gets in the Fight The House has acted; the Senate should go next: Time for the Senate to Vote on Electoral Count Act Reform ARTICLES Dan McLaughlin: The Pollster Who Thinks It's Happening Again for Republicans Charles C. W. Cooke: Elizabeth Warren Is Trump in Professor's Clothing Andrew McCarthy: Trump Concedes Possible Indictment Rich Lowry: What's Wrong with Illegal Immigrants? Jack Fowler: Antisemitism Runs Amok at CUNY as Teachers Fight for Janus Rights Michael Brendan Dougherty: Who's Using Whom in the Migrant Wars? Caroline Downey: Inside Student Activists’ Cancel Campaign against a Youngkin Appointee to UVA Board Jim Geraghty: The World Loses a Good One in Greg Pollowitz Diana Glebova: Father Arrested for Protesting Daughter’s Rape in Loudoun School ‘Relieved’ after Democratic Prosecutor Dismissed Senator Todd Young: In England and in America, It's Time for the Next Generation of Conservatives to Step Up Ryan Mills: Wastewater, Not Climate, Fueled Massive Algae Bloom in ‘Epicenter of Supposed Environmentalism’ Jimmy Quinn: U.S. Diplomats Required to 'Advance' DEI to Receive Promotions Mark Antonio Wright: What Would a Russian Mobilization Look Like? Jerry Hendrix: Putin Approaches the Nuclear Red Line CAPITAL MATTERS Kevin Hassett provides the roadmap for stagflation (depressing contextual note — we're at Step 6 now): The Ten Steps of Stagflation LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW. Armond White, with the review you've been waiting for: The Woman King Is Bad News Even art critics sometimes reconsider their own opinions. Brian Allen does so as it pertains to a long-cherished institution — don't miss the quoted passage toward the end: Is the Clark Art Institute the Latest Anti-Art Museum? Dan strongly recommends the Creedence doc, a tribute to the band whose songs "sounded as if they'd always existed": The Most American Band EXCERPTS ON DEMAND AND AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Does the name Trafalgar ring a bell? It's the polling firm that's put out some heterodox — and often accurate — readings of voter sentiments in recent years. Dan McLaughlin talks to its founder about his 2022 data reflecting a big year for Republicans: One pollster who has dissented from the pack since 2016 remains bullish on Republican fortunes and skeptical of his competitors: Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar. As I and others at National Review have detailed previously, Trafalgar has racked up a string of polling successes in recent years by talking to the very sorts of voters that other pollsters have missed, many of whom have responded to Trump and Trumpish candidates. Trafalgar was ahead of the curve in Virginia in 2021, and alone in seeing a tight race in New Jersey in 2021. In 2020, even when Trafalgar got the outcome wrong in projecting narrow Trump victories in some states, his forecasts were often closer to the result than competitors who projected comfortable wins for Biden in states that Biden carried by his fingernails. Trafalgar has also turned in strong performances in this year's Republican primary polls. There are no infallible oracles in the businesses of polling or poll analysis, as anyone could tell you from the ups and downs of the careers of John Zogby, Nate Silver, and Sam Wang. Trafalgar has had the occasional clunker, such as projecting a tight race in the 2021 California recall well after other pollsters showed it breaking hard for Gavin Newsom. The very nature of polling counsels us that even the best polling methodology will sometimes produce outliers. But, as is true of analysts such as Silver or Sean Trende, Trafalgar's track record commands respect, especially compared with pollsters who have faced persistent problems and not corrected them. FiveThirtyEight, which gave high marks to Trafalgar for its accuracy in 2020, currently gives the firm an A- rating for polls conducted within 21 days of an election, ahead of the vast majority of pollsters rated. Trafalgar is out on a limb once again, projecting good news for Republicans across the board compared with what other pollsters are reporting. . . . My natural skepticism of too much good news from a single source leads me to ask: Is this for real? So, I caught up with Cahaly and asked why he's getting different results from other pollsters. His answer is straightforward: Polling is broken, it is not contacting a representative sample of Americans, and other pollsters aren't doing enough to fix it.
The Bay Area might not be walking the walk on environmentalism. Ryan Mills reports: It was late July when San Francisco Bay Area residents first grew concerned: The water in a channel near Oakland was turning a murky, tea-colored brown. Scientists in the region tested the water and found a bloom of algae, Heterosigma akashiwo, that causes a form of what is known as "red tide." By the end of August, the bloom had spread throughout San Francisco Bay. Observers who flew over the bay saw that most of the water had turned a reddish brown. And then came the fish kills: dead sharks, sturgeon, stiped bass, minnows, and other sea life washed up and covered local shores. The algae bloom was the worst in the San Francisco Bay in almost two decades. Warm water is typically one of the key ingredients algae blooms need to grow, so many people likely assumed that scientists, environmental activists, and mainstream media outlets would point at climate change as the primary cause of the San Francisco Bay bloom. But that's not the case. In a report earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that what fueled the bloom was not a mystery, and it wasn't the warm weather. Rather, the bloom was fueled by excessive nutrients in the wastewater, or effluent, pumped into the bay by the region's 37 sewage plants. "Either you're treating the effluent to standards that are safe for the receiving waters or you're not. It doesn't have anything to do with the climate. Either you have working infrastructure or you don't. You're either overflowing raw sewage or you aren't," said Kristi Diener, a California clean water advocate, who is also an advocate for the state's farmers and ranchers. Diener said the algae bloom and the fish kills, which have since dissipated, caused the Bay Area's eight million residents and its leaders to wake up to the long-brewing problem. San Francisco Bay has among the highest nutrient levels of any bay or estuary in the world. "The irony is this is happening in the epicenter of supposed environmentalism," she said.
Diana Glebova details developments in the disturbing case out of Loudoun County that has received national attention: Scott Smith was arrested in Loudoun County last year after confronting members of the local school board about his daughter's assault in a school bathroom by a male student who was wearing a skirt at the time. Smith was charged with disorderly conduct after resisting arrest, and has been appealing for months to have Democratic prosecutor Buta Biberaj removed from his case on the grounds that the prosecutor can't be impartial, since she initially let his daughter's rapist go free, allowing him to assault another girl at the school he was transferred to. Smith was "relieved" to hear that Biberaj, who "seemed to want to make his case into a political prosecution," was replaced by a special prosecutor last week, his lawyer, Bill Stanley, told National Review. Biberaj had pushed for Smith to serve a longer jail sentence, and asked that he receive mandatory anger management training and pay a fine. Biberaj had previously campaigned against mass incarcerations, but wanted Smith to have an "active jail sentence . . . as part of his punishment," according to Stanley. Biberaj also participated in a Facebook doxxing group that exposed parents "who stood up to the school board against the dangerous policies that they were trying to pass," Stanley added, saying those policies "resulted in the harm that happened to Mr. Smith's daughter." After Biberaj's dismissal, Smith's "faith in the judicial system and his belief that he can get a fair trial has been restored," Stanley added, noting that Smith "is confident" that he will be found not guilty, and that "this has been a political prosecution from the very beginning." Biberaj did not respond to National Review when asked if she believed her actions were indicative of a conflict of interest that would prevent her from handling Smith's case in an impartial manner.
Andrew McCarthy flags an interesting turn in the Trump case: Former president Donald Trump has acknowledged that he could be indicted for mishandling classified information. The concession came in a letter his counsel submitted Monday evening to Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master appointed to conduct a privilege review of documents seized by the FBI from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has been cornered into admitting his criminal exposure because of an issue he has gratuitously raised: the claim that he declassified the documents bearing classification markings that he retained at Mar-a-Lago. Dearie, a senior federal judge in Brooklyn who was appointed last Thursday by Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon, has directed Trump to provide details. Publicly, Trump has insisted that he declassified the documents. Yet he did not provide an affidavit to that effect in the lawsuit he filed seeking the special master. Clearly concerned about being accused of misleading the court, Trump's lawyers have taken pains not to make a positive claim of declassification. Nevertheless, they have intimated that the documents may not be classified.
Shout-Outs Batya Ungar-Sargon, at UnHerd: America doesn't want a civil war Suzy Weiss, at Common Sense (more on this here): 'Crime Is a Construct': My Morning With the Park Slope Panthers Lara Korte & Jeremy B. White, at Politico: Rising homelessness is tearing California cities apart Caleb Davis, at Reuters: Flights out of Russia sell out after Putin orders partial call-up CODA "And now for something completely different." Kevin Antonio writes in with a bowl of ear candy, a poppy, hooky little number called "What's Your Sign?" by California band the Hot Toddies. The bubblegum jaunt conjures scenes of beaches and tiny umbrellas, just as summer fades; it also sounds like it belongs in a Tarantino film, to me. It's okay to like it. Thanks for reading. | 
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