NATIONAL REVIEW
APR 26, 2024 |
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◼ Garden sprinklers (temporarily) dispersed the pro-Hamas revolutionaries camped on Harvard's lawn. ¡Viva la irrigación!
◼ It wasn't pretty, and he had to rely on Democratic votes, but Speaker Mike Johnson finally got a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan through the House, and it then won Senate approval. President Biden signed it into law. The best argument against Ukraine aid is that it is costly and depleting U.S. armaments. But it would be just as costly to bolster front-line states—as we almost certainly would feel compelled to do—if Russia were to vanquish Ukraine. As for U.S. weapons stocks, about $23 billion of the roughly $60 billion in the Ukraine portion of the bill is devoted to replenishing them, although much more needs to be done to revitalize the U.S. military–industrial base. Now, Johnson's reward for doing the right thing is a potential challenge to his speakership led by the MAGA agitator and noted conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.). If she goes through with it, Johnson might have to rely on Democratic votes to survive. That this could be the only way to avoid another chaotic, pointless speaker fight is a commentary on the quality of a fraction of the GOP backbench, not of the leadership.
◼ As part of the aid package, the Senate finally passed the so-called TikTok bill, a measure passed by the House of Representatives last month after TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, had the platform's users flood the Capitol's phone banks in protest. Under China's National Intelligence Law of 2017, the massive fund of user data surreptitiously collected by ByteDance is the property of the Chinese Communist Party. The TikTok bill forces ByteDance to either sell the company to a neutral third party or have the app blocked in the American market. Despite attempts by lobbyists on both sides of the aisle to prevent it from reaching the floor, it passed overwhelmingly. President Biden has signed it into law, and now legal challenges await. America's avowed foreign enemies should not be allowed to stockpile personally valuable and sometimes compromising information on some 150 million U.S. citizens.
◼ It was perhaps inevitable that the anti-Israel demonstrations roiling college campuses across the country since the October 7 massacre would devolve into incoherent, menacing displays of hostility toward Jews, the West, and the United States. That's what became of the protests on Columbia University's campus this week. There, student agitators erected a makeshift tent city to protest not only Israel's defensive war in the Gaza Strip but also, seemingly, the presence of Jews on campus. Demonstrators chanted "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground" and "Go Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets, too" as they physically pushed dissenters and visibly Jewish matriculants out of the spaces the protesters sought to "occupy." Videos feature protesters going so far as to advise the Jews in their presence to "go back to Poland," which Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) rightly called a slogan for a "nascent pogrom." Columbia administrators tasked New York City police with rousting the protests, but the students quickly reconstituted their encampment after the city declined to prosecute arrestees. The gauntlet has been thrown, not just at Columbia but on campuses all over the country. The remedy must include suspensions, expulsions—and more homework.
◼ The Biden administration told the Supreme Court that Idaho's law against abortion results in emergency rooms' denying abortions that women need to preserve their health—and that the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA) overrides the state's law. This is part of the administration's broader effort to federalize the abortion question by litigation and administrative fiat. Its position is bizarre. EMTALA says nothing about abortion and, indeed, requires emergency treatment for unborn children. It is a condition of state receipt of funding for Medicare, even though that program provides health care for the elderly. Justice Elena Kagan claimed at oral arguments that EMTALA allows the "medical community" to set evolving nationwide standards for emergency care that override the work of state legislatures and medical boards. In her view, then, the mandates of federal law should change over time, without approval even by an agency, let alone by Congress. The breadth of the administration's theory was revealed when the solicitor general conceded that it would allow Congress, through spending conditions, to pass a national ban on abortion and gender-reassignment surgery. The Court should pause at such sweeping assertions.
◼ Speaking of the Biden administration's seizing any fig leaf in the law to claim vast authority never contemplated by Congress, the Federal Trade Commission—which, last we checked, is not the primary regulator of terms of employment—has banned most noncompete clauses, covering the contracts of some 30 million workers nationwide. Perhaps most alarmingly, the FTC claims the power to retroactively rewrite millions of existing contracts, a prospect that deprives companies of the benefits of bargains they struck by paying employees to accept such contractual terms. There are fair policy debates over noncompete clauses, which serve the legitimate business purpose of allowing companies to recoup their investment in training employees and providing them with proprietary information but can also restrict the free movement of labor and the formation of new businesses. Common law and the 13th Amendment's ban on involuntary servitude have long placed outer limits on such agreements, and some states go further. But the FTC has broken from its long-standing case-by-case enforcement policy and busted the limits of its statutory powers, which is why two of the five commissioners voted against the rule, and why the Chamber of Commerce has sued to enjoin it.
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◼ Arizona has joined Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada in indicting "fake electors" for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Trump's electors also settled civil charges in Wisconsin. The Arizona defendants include two state senators, former state party chairwoman and Senate candidate Kelli Ward and her husband, and former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon. Sealed names in the indictment apparently include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, and Jenna Ellis. The electors are not the right targets. Everyone knew at the time that their certificates in all cases would take effect only if certified by the governor and accepted by Congress. Everybody knew they had not been certified by the governor (in Arizona, Doug Ducey stood up to very public presidential pressure) and that Trump had lost the state's popular vote. That's not fraud. Other states declined to indict electors because their certificates said explicitly that they were conditional—which suggests that these electors were indicted because they had bad lawyers who failed to include the proper caveats. That said, all involved at least allowed themselves to be used as pawns in a shameful scheme. ◼ What is the crime? That question hovers as the first week of Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan draws to a close. He was charged a year ago with falsifying business records—a misdemeanor that Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg inflated into 34 felonies by absurdly parsing a single transaction and alleging that Trump acted with fraudulent intent to commit or conceal another crime, which the indictment did not identify. Simultaneously, Bragg issued a "statement of facts" that spun the indictment as a "scheme" to steal the 2016 election by suppressing damaging information—specifically, credible allegations about long-ago extramarital flings. As the trial began, Bragg's chief prosecutor, former top Biden DOJ official Matthew Colangelo, upped the ante, claiming that Trump had conspired to suppress the information. As suppressing information is not a crime, planning to do it, which all campaigns do, cannot be a criminal conspiracy. Bragg counters that it is if the suppression was unlawful under a New York election law and that paying hush money in contravention of federal campaign-finance laws is unlawful. But nondisclosure agreements are legal, and they don't violate federal campaign laws—which Bragg has no authority to enforce in any event. Oh, and the violation of the election law Bragg and Colangelo cite is a misdemeanor—i.e., Trump supposedly committed 34 felonies (a potential 136 years' imprisonment) by committing a misdemeanor to conceal a misdemeanor. What a farce. |
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◼ In a stunning ruling, New York's highest court reversed the sexual-assault convictions of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. A 4–3 majority held that the trial court erred in permitting a raft of uncharged sexual-abuse evidence. The majority reasoned that the improper purpose of that evidence was to demonstrate propensity: to suggest that the defendant must have committed the charged crime because he habitually engaged in that type of behavior. The appeals court further ruled that Weinstein may be tried again. For now, he will remain in custody, having been convicted on similar charges in California, where he was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment. Still, Weinstein's New York trial and conviction were a crescendo of the Me Too movement. For now, the conviction has been erased, and a court has reaffirmed the principle that criminal guilt turns on the strength of the evidence of the crime that the grand jury has charged, not on evidence of crimes it has not charged, and not on the passions of a political moment.
◼ In 1972, Congress passed Title IX to ban discrimination "on the basis of sex" in educational institutions. Though the law offered equal protection to both sexes, the intended beneficiaries were primarily women. Last week, however, the Biden administration turned this legacy on its head, releasing a regulatory rewrite that strips women of their right to safety, privacy, and equal opportunity by redefining sex to include "gender identity"—allowing men into female-only sports and spaces. The rewrite also expands the definition of "sex-based harassment," removing due-process and free-speech protections, as well as parental rights when children tell school personnel that they think they're transgender. The Biden administration has struck a rare simultaneous blow against freedom, the rule of law, and biology.
◼ The House Select Committee on the CCP issued a report finding that the Chinese government directly subsidized fentanyl-precursor companies, heaped praise on them, and stonewalled U.S. officials who tried to get Beijing to crack down. The report provides critical substantiation of the claim that China has chosen not to do anything about the trafficking of fentanyl precursors and indeed has fueled the crisis. That undercuts one of the Biden administration's core arguments for seeking détente with China: that forging stronger ties with Beijing is a prerequisite for stopping fentanyl from reaching America. The White House wagered that making a concession to China on U.S. sanctions in response to the genocide of Uyghurs would be worth it for the sake of resuming bilateral dialogue on counternarcotic policies. Predictably, Beijing's only apparent interest is in forestalling meaningful U.S. action against its misconduct.
◼ The Kremlin established its special office for disinformation in 1923. Era after era, these guys are good at it: all too. One of their greatest successes is the lie that the U.S. government concocted the AIDS virus (in a Maryland laboratory). They planted the lie in 1983. They did so in one of their outlets, an Indian newspaper called "the Patriot." Soon, this fantastic lie was being touted by such American celebrities as Spike Lee. And it lives on. Aaron Rodgers recently voiced it. He is a great quarterback, a great athlete, interested in politics—heavy on conspiracy. Jonathan Swift said, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect." Even now, however, in the case of the AIDS hoax, men are not quite undeceived.
◼ Talk of cigarette prohibition was, we were told, wildly exaggerated, but that is the (phased-in) point that, once the necessary legislation passes through its remaining stages, England will reach this year. The rest of the U.K. will follow suit. Currently, no one younger than 18 can legally buy tobacco products in the U.K. If the proposed law is approved, the minimum age will increase annually every year after 2026. No one born in 2009 or thereafter will ever be able to buy a cigarette. This "legacy" project of flailing Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak was inspired by a law passed in New Zealand under the Jacinda Ardern government (no recommendation) that has since been repealed. Leave aside the absurdities of the proposed law (years hence, a 35-year-old will not be allowed to buy a cigarette when a 36-year-old can) and the gift it represents to black-marketeers. It is a reminder of how far Britain's Conservatives have changed their view—for the worse—on where the border should be fixed between the rights of the individual and the demands of the state. Smoking is a dangerous pleasure, but adults should decide for themselves whether to indulge in it. |
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