[guest post by JVW]

In last Friday’s Weekend Open Thread, Dana reported on the GOP House leadership taking up the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan military aid bill. The Ukraine issue has thus far divided conservatives, and today National Review published two diverse opinions on the matter. First off was the magazine’s house editorial congratulating Speaker Mike Johnson and expressing approval that the U.S. would continue to fund those who were bravely doing battle with rogue states and miserable tyrants:

Johnson deserves credit for changing his mind on Ukraine funding once he acquired real responsibility as speaker and also for trying every alternative to keep his conference together before moving to pass the aid with Democratic votes as a last resort.

Had the Ukraine measure stayed bottled up in the House, Johnson would have borne an outsized measure of blame if an artillery-starved Ukrainian military collapsed.

[. . .]

The best argument against Ukraine aid is that it is costly and depleting U.S. stocks of weapons. 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 sweep to victory in Ukraine. The legislation makes the aid, in theory, a loan, and it attempts to offset the costs with seized Russian assets.

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.

The overall package includes more than $26 billion in aid for Israel, with crucial funding to replenish its missile defenses, and more than $8 billion for Taiwan and Indo-Pacific security. In a nice additional win, the TikTok divestiture bill was added to the package. It now will be passed along with the rest of the overall bill by a Senate that had seemed reluctant to take it up.

The rest of the editorial lays out the peril that this compromise poses to Mr. Johnson’s Speakership, and chides the bloc of Republican members who seem willing to abandon Ukraine to the devices of Russia.

In today’s pages (er, on today’s screen) Michael Brendan Dougherty dissents from his colleagues. Believing that this is the classic trap of good intentions but zero accountability or strategic thinking, Mr. Dougherty questions whether this is a war that ought to continue, especially since its proponents now openly admit that the support of the United States is vital to Ukraine’s aims:

These bills are a monument to our decadence and political cynicism. Nobody has put forward a cogent argument for how Ukraine will do better with less aid than we gave it last year in preparation for its major counteroffensive. Look to the press, and it’s a repeat of Mitch McConnell’s disgraceful performance in the Senate a few weeks ago. There is hardly even a pretense that Putin will be defeated, but there’s lots of backslapping that the native populists and other skeptics have been defeated.

He rejects the notion that forcing Ukraine into a peace deal as a disarmed, non-aligned “buffer” state between Russia and NATO is a huge capitulation for the West, and points to the history of such states as important neutral zones between competing European nations:

We would never take that deal, indeed, because we have two giant oceans and two friendly countries around us. But it’s traditional in European politics for smaller nations next to major military powers to have “neutrality” as the outer limit of their foreign-policy independence. Switzerland’s neutrality was never intended as a statement of confidence in the promises of Hitler. It worked because Switzerland was reliable and the two major military powers next to it could depend on the fact that Switzerland would not be used by a hostile foreign power as a launch pad. Maybe you prefer a world in which Switzerland perpetually risks its existence to be a more morally compelling figure in the geopolitical drama. But the Swiss, looking at the Germans, the French, the Italians, and before them the Austro-Hungarian Empire, thought differently.

Mr. Dougherty goes on to rhetorically ask why the U.S. and NATO are not more involved in the crisis in Armenia, where last September Azerbaijan forces raided Armenian villages and forced the evacuation of around 100,000 ethnic Armenians, in what Mr. Dougherty believes qualifies as “ethnic cleansing” every bit as much as what Russia is doing in the Donbas. And ultimately he concludes that Ukraine, like Armenia, is just not that much of a strategic interest to the United States:

[NRO writer Jim] Geraghty says that if we want peace, we should prepare for war. But that’s the whole problem for his position. The American people do not want to sign up to fight for Ukraine’s sovereignty themselves. They do not see it as in their national interest because our security and prosperity has never depended on Ukraine. We cannot be crippled by someone else controlling some of its resources. We hardly do any trade with Ukraine. And so there are hard democratic limits on America’s power to affect the outcome that Geraghty and National Review at large would like to see. [. . .] Polls at the very start of this war showed that a supermajority of Americans did not want the U.S. to play a major role in it. Now, Geraghty admits in his dispatch today that without our lethal military aid, Ukraine would choose a different course. In other words, we do have that major role. Choosing your own course in the face of the constraints real life places on you is the only definition of freedom that we have for most peoples. The job of the American military is to defend and advance American interests, not to make the world fair for Russia’s neighbors or teach Putin a lesson.

Finally, according to Mr. Dougherty, not only does the compromise bill not do anything to solve our border crisis, it actively makes things worse and undermine GOP candidates this fall:

Now, we get a good look at the Ukraine-aid bill and the bill to aid Israel. Combine them both, and you will find $4 billion dispersed between the State Department and the Office of Refugee Settlement to be given to left-wing NGOs who help border crossers evade our immigration laws.

Congratulations Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell! You managed to throw away all leverage Republicans had, pass something that Republican voters don’t want, and that every single Democratic lawmaker did want, and to make the border situation much worse in the meantime, while filling up the treasuries of your ideological enemies. The gift to the NGOs will be used by whatever populist challengers are left in GOP congressional primaries to challenge incumbents, putting more wild-eyed and untested people in winnable races. Biden may be senile, but his administration just played McConnell and Johnson like a Stradivarius.

Mr. Dougherty’s broadside seems to elide the fact that the compromise also enrages left-wing activists due to the support that will go to Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas, right at the moment when so much of the American left has decided to go all-in on supporting the rancid Palestinian cause. I would imagine that there is a left-wing version of Michael Brendan Dougherty out there who is eviscerating the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats for enabling this betrayal of their sacred cause. But I don’t really want to waste any time searching for it.

If nothing else, this should serve as a stark reminder to all of us at how difficult the choices are for our elected officials, especially when we are dealing with irrational actors who are untethered to reality and instead spend 100% of their time living within their own imaginary worlds. But enough about the two major party Presidential candidates. Instead, the contrasting viewpoints between the NRO editors and Michael Brendan Dougherty present a pretty vivid contrast to the legitimate strains of conservative thought here in 2024. All of us had better understand the arguments on both sides of the conservative divide and be ready to deal with them, at least as much as we should understand the spectrum of foreign policy thought on the left.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Israel responds:

Two U.S. officials confirm to CBS News that an Israeli missile has hit Iran. The strike follows last weekend’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to respond to.

Additionally:

Israel told the US that it is not targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, CNN reports, citing a senior US official.

There are several sites affiliated with Iran’s nuclear program in and around Isfahan.

CNN also quotes a US official saying the explosions in Iran are Israel’s response to Iranian attacks over the weekend. The official adds that the Israeli strikes are meant to be “limited” and would target Iranian military sites, while avoiding civilian and nuclear targets.

Earlier today, Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian warned that if Israel were to take any sort of military action against Iran, their response would be “immediate and at a maximum level.”

Moreover, the U.S. was notified of Israel’s planned response but did not endorse it.

Second news item

Speaker Mike Johnson makes a decision; better late than never:

The U.S. House of Representatives will have its long-awaited vote on aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific as soon as Saturday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday, paving the way for its possible passage despite fierce objections from the right wing of his conference.

The House Appropriations Committee unveiled legislation providing more than $95 billion in security assistance, including $60.84 billion to address the conflict in Ukraine, of which $23.2 billion would be used to replenish U.S. weapons, stocks and facilities.

. . . Johnson said he would give House members 72 hours — until midday Saturday — to review the bill and offer amendments before a vote on final passage.

He also said he would release a separate border security bill, meeting a demand from conservatives.

Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed frustration with Speaker Johnson’s decision to bring the aid package to a vote. Speaking to Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast, she said:

“We want an America-first economy and, from now on, Steve, we’re going to demand it from our Republican leaders”…

“I don’t care if the speaker’s office becomes a revolving door,” added Greene, who has filed a motion to ax Johnson from leadership just months after he was chosen by Republicans. “If that’s exactly what needs to happen, then let it be. But the days are over of the old Republican Party that wants to fund foreign wars and murder people in foreign lands, while they stab the American people in their face and refuse to protect Americans.”

Even if it means saving his job, Johnson said he would not move to change the current motion to vacate standard that the House had previously adopted. Shame on the Republicans for the lengthy delay on such a critical issue.

Update::

The House voted Friday in a bipartisan manner to advance a key foreign aid package, a significant step in sending aid to Ukraine and Israel and setting up a final vote as soon as Saturday.

In an extraordinary move, more Democrats (165) supported the measure than Republicans (151). The Democratic votes were necessary to overcome opposition from Speaker Mike Johnson’s right flank, who will likely only increase their calls to oust him.

Thank you, Democrats!

Reminder: Too many Republicans (and by that I mean any at all!) are parroting Russian propaganda, vilifying Ukraine, and failing to see the dire consequences for the West if Ukraine were to fall to Russia.

As it stands, three three Republicans are supporting a push to oust Johnson: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Thomas Massie.

And here is Marge being schooled by Timothy Snyder:

A brilliant response by Timothy Snyder to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s accusation of Nazis in Ukraine. As a leading scholar on the subject of nationalism, Snyder makes three points:
1/n pic.twitter.com/fnbrZ9VO2Y

— Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇦 (@rshereme) April 19, 2024

Third news item

USC Provost Andrew Guzman rescinded valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s invitation to speak at the university, citing safety concerns:

He said in an announcement Monday that “over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor.”

“The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement,” the announcement read in part.

Jewish students explained their concerns about Tabassum’s selection:

After Tabassum was selected as valedictorian, at least two pro-Israel and Jewish groups complained to USC about the choice. They pointed to her social media activity, including her Instagram account, which links to a slideshow encouraging people to “learn about what’s happening in palestine, and how to help.”

It calls for “one palestinian state,” which it says “would mean palestinian liberation, and the complete abolishment of the state of israel.”

Brandon Tavakoli, president of Trojans for Israel, called Tabassum’s post “antisemitic.”

“The university has to make the decision about whether this valedictorian and her propagation of antisemitic vitriol online is worthy of being the representative of the class of 2024,” he told NBC News. “Commencement is supposed to be an inclusive and welcoming space for all students, including Jewish graduates and their families.”

Trojans for Israel said in a statement on Instagram that university officials failed to vet Tabassum’s social media posts and condemn what it described as antisemitic content.

Tabassum responded to the decision by USC:

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,”

From the university provost:

There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.

Given how many top universities across the country have been mysteriously unable to protect Jewish students during this tumultuous season of protest and violence, I guess it stands to reason that USC would also be unable to protect its Muslim students as well, no???

Fourth news item

How it’s going during voir dire on Day 4 of Trump’s hush money trial:

One of the jurors being questioned, who earlier said her father is friends with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, broke down crying, saying, “I have to be honest, I feel so nervous and anxious right now. I’m sorry.”

She added, “I thought I could do this … I don’t want you to feel like I’ve wasted anyone’s time.”

Merchan called her over to the judge’s bench to speak before excusing her.

Yet another potential juror has been excused from the trial after saying that she is feeling “anxiety” and self-doubt. The potential juror’s voice cracked while answering questions.

The juror is now the third to be excused Friday, underscoring the difficulty the court faces for picking Trump’s jury.

One juror, when questioned about how he views Trump said, when he thinks of the former president, he thinks “usually awesome.”

“I don’t know him personally. He’s a family man. He’s a businessman,” the juror also said about Trump.

Fifth news item

Irony overload: An infamous former president who attempted to overturn legitimate election results plans to safeguard the integrity of the 2024 election in battleground states:

Former President Donald Trump’s political operation said Thursday that it plans to deploy more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers across battleground states to monitor — and potentially challenge — vote counting in November.

The initiative — which the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee described as “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history” — will include training poll watchers and workers as well as lawyers…

Trump has warned supporters, without evidence, that Democrats could try to rig the 2024 election.

Sixth news order

Foiled by Polish authorities:

A Polish man has been arrested and charged with planning to co-operate with Russian intelligence services to aid a possible assassination of Volodymyr Zelensky, authorities said.

Polish prosecutors said the man, named as Pawel K, was allegedly tasked with collecting information about an airport in Poland used by Ukraine’s president.

The arrest was made on the basis of Ukrainian intelligence, they added.

Authorities did not specify whether the man actually passed any information on.

Seventh news item

Taking action:

More than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University were arrested Thursday afternoon and an on-campus tent encampment was removed after the school’s president gave the New York Police Department the green light to clear the protesters, officials said.

The demonstrators had occupied Columbia’s south lawn for over 30 hours “in violation of the university’s rules” and did not leave despite “numerous warnings,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said.

Columbia President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik announced in a letter to the Columbia community Thursday that she has authorized the New York Police Department to clear demonstrators from campus, writing, “This morning, I had to make a decision that I hoped would never be necessary.”

“I regret that all of these attempts to resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved. As a result, NYPD officers are now on campus and the process of clearing the encampment is underway,” Shafik said.

This:

Privilege is when you hold a loudly disruptive, all-night hate festival in the center of campus, sleep in cozy, matching tents, and when the grown-ups finally force you to leave, custodians who work hard for a living are called in to clean up your mess. pic.twitter.com/GHO5ehUxKK

— Columbia Jewish Alumni Assoc. (@CU_JewishAlumni) April 18, 2024

Have a great weekend.

–Dana

My latest newsletter explains that I have been working on a (currently 8000+ word) post about Radley Balko’s ridiculous mischaracterization of Coleman Hughes’s article about the Derek Chauvin trial. BUT, given that it’s taking so long to get out, I thought I would first toss out a short (OK, maybe not so short, as it’s 4000+ words) review of Coleman’s new book on colorblindness. 2700 free words — and for the paid subscribers, another 2000+ words and a book giveaway.

First, an excerpt from the free portion:

[T]here is genuine reason to believe that adherents of neoracism believe that white people are inferior, and that historically marginalized races are superior. And people seem to take this for granted, like there is nothing unusual about it. This is not a healthy attitude for society.

The whole notion of black racial superiority can take very odd forms, though. It can actually manifest itself in a way that sounds very much like the ravings of a traditional white supremacist. For example, a former chancellor of the New York City schools used a book to teach administrators that deems traits like “perfectionism,” “objectivity,” and “worship of the written word” to be a part of “White Supremacy Culture” that should not be taught to black students. Coleman notes:

The National Museum of African American History and Culture even included a graphic in its website (which was later removed) claiming that hard work, self-reliance, and the nuclear family were attributes of “white dominant culture.”

Doesn’t it remind you of that classic Ryan Long sketch with the woke guy and the racist who agree on everything?

You can easily imagine these guys looking at each other and chanting in unison: “perfectionism, hard work, and self-reliance are attributes of white culture!” Wow, you believe that too?! How great is that?!?!

I actually think the portion for paid subscribers is more interesting, as it has my (minor) criticisms of the book, which mostly revolve around Coleman not applying a critical enough lens to some of the arguments of the Ibram X. Kendi crowd. Fortunately, I have some Substack articles of my own that fill that gap.

Plus, the free book giveaway. As of the publication of this post there are still two unclaimed copies.

Read it here. Subscribe here.

I posted this morning about my recent prediction that the sheep in this country who bleated their disapproval of the Trump New York indictment would change their tune. The latest evidence comes from Mark Joseph Stern, in his piece I Was a Skeptic of the Stormy Daniels Prosecution. I Was Wrong. Stern is a commentator for whom I have no respect (I am calling him a sheep, remember), so don’t think my citation of his piece signals approval of him or anything he said. But his conversion further portends the direction of the rest of the crowd of mindless woolybacks.

When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought criminal charges against Donald Trump in 2023, I was highly skeptical of his decision. It seemed at the time that other indictments would soon follow, and that they would rest on far firmer legal ground than this one. Over the past year, though, I have realized that my initial doubts about Bragg’s indictment were misplaced.

. . . .

Last year, I was uncertain whether this scheme, while sordid, rose to the level of a felony offense. I am now convinced that, if proved that he took these actions, it surely does. The falsification of business records is, by itself, a misdemeanor under New York law, but it’s a felony when it’s done with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” In his indictment, Bragg claims that Trump lied about the payments with the intent to violate election law, which is what elevates the crime to a felony.

As an aside, I would love to challenge Stern to point to me exactly where, in the indictment he linked, he finds the claim that Trump lied about the payments with the intent to violate election law. I do not find that claim in the indictment. Do you? And, in fact, there are other possible underlying crimes Bragg has cited, like tax fraud. But please, let’s allow the bleating to continue:

Initially, I was suspicious of this theory; what election law, exactly, was the former president attempting to violate? The district attorney’s initial statement of facts was hazy on this crucial point, raising the possibility that he couldn’t tie the underlying fraud to a state or federal statute.

Turns out he could. Bragg has argued, convincingly, that the former president intended to violate at least two election laws—one state, one federal. First, Bragg asserted that Trump and Cohen ran afoul of the Federal Election Campaign Act by making unlawful campaign contributions (in the form of a payoff) at the direction of a candidate (that is, Trump). Cohen already pleaded guilty for this very act in federal court, so it is hardly a stretch to accuse Trump of intending to break the law by participating in the crime. Second, Bragg argued that Trump ran afoul of a New York election law that forbids any conspiracy “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” The district attorney claimed that Trump intended to violate this statute by committing fraud in order to secure his own victory in 2016.

There is nothing especially creative about these theories; they are not an example of prosecutors stretching the law to its breaking point so it can fit over the facts of a questionable case. The application of both federal and state election codes, and their interplay with the underlying violation of New York’s business records law, is straightforward.

Stern has completely missed the theory about tax fraud being another potential underlying crime. That’s OK. You guys aren’t reading Stern for insight into the Bragg prosecution. If you want that, you’d read my Substack, where I covered the tax fraud theory in detail.

On the eve of the trial, it is now apparent that the prosecutors are on firm legal ground. They have effectively neutralized Trump’s plan to kill the case before it can be tried on the facts.

Yeah, well, it was apparently to many of us long before the eve of trial. But the herd had not yet moved in the direction of praising the New York case. Now it is starting to move in that direction. So it’s safe for sheep like Stern to move with the crowd.

I just hope New York prosecutors have more than Michael Cohen, because otherwise these sheep are headed for the mutton house.

But I think the prosecutors have it. I’m not worried. And if I become worried, you’ll be the first to know.

Because I’m not a sheep.

Jury selection in Donald Trump’s New York prosecution for felony falsification of business records begins today. Regular readers know that, while I have acknowledged that this case is the least consequential of the four criminal cases Trump faces, I believe the case is legally sound. I have written many lengthy pieces on my Substack (and one at The Dispatch) defending the prosecution, which — if the prosecutors have more than Michael Cohen, and I think they do — may turn out to be a substantial case indeed.

I said in February: “it is also a real possibility that about a month from now, the Conventional Wisdom will start to turn. And that people will realize: hey, this actually is a serious case after all.”

OK, it took a couple of months (I thought the trial was going to start in March) but I think it’s starting to happen. As an example, I present to you the case of one Jed Shugerman, who took to the pages of the New York Times last year to declare the case a “legal embarrassment” but now is backing away from that opinion. Shugerman was interviewed for a piece that came out in the New Yorker yesterday and his comments are enlightening:

Last year, after the indictment was announced, a Boston University law professor named Jed Shugerman wrote a blunt Op-Ed in the Times titled “The Trump Indictment Is a Legal Embarrassment.” Shugerman is no Trump fan; he just had questions about the strength of the case. “Even if it survives a challenge that could reach the Supreme Court, a trial would most likely not start until at least mid-2024, possibly even after the 2024 election,” he wrote.

Part of this skepticism had to do with the novel way in which Bragg brought the charges against Trump. In New York, falsifying a business record is a misdemeanor. The crime can be bumped up to felony status, however, if it is done to aid and conceal a so-called underlying crime. In the Trump case, the underlying crimes referred to in the charging documents include violations of federal election law, to which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to in 2018. Trump’s case is historic, not only because it is the first of its kind involving a former President but because it involves an unusual legal maneuver: reaching to federal law to bolster the state charges of falsifying business records. “Stretching jurisdiction,” Shugerman called it. And yet the law professor acknowledges now that he underestimated the case. “I still think people, well-intentioned people, have graded this case on a curve,” he said. But he’d been persuaded by arguments that he’d heard from colleagues and friends. “I’m now more willing to say that it’s fair for the prosecution to go forward, and for Trump to have his day in appellate court,” he said. He, too, thinks a conviction is likely.

Note the part I have bolded. This is a perfect example of the herd mentality that I alluded to in February. It’s not entirely clear whether he is saying he was persuaded by others last year, or now. My guess is: both. But either way, he’s going with the herd, and his new opinion suggests that the herd is changing its mind.

For some time, I have been in a distinct minority of legal commentators saying I thought this case had substance. But the herd said otherwise. Shugerman, in bleating his friends’ and colleagues’ opinion on the pages of the New York Times, made much of the argument that the case was preempted by federal law. But if you’re a reader of my Substack, you know that a federal judge made short work of that argument (about which I had been publicly skeptical) in an opinion that Donald Trump never even bothered to appeal. The trial judge in New York reaffirmed that he agreed recently, as I explained in another Substack piece. With developments like these, and with the trial judge throwing out just about every argument that the herd relied upon last year, the herd is beginning to sing a different tune — and Shugerman is right there with them.

I predict you’ll be seeing a lot more of this, as the herd begins to learn that PREEMPTION ARGUMENT BAAAAD, BRAGG CASE GOOD.

On Thursday I appeared on the “Beg to Differ” podcast hosted by Mona Charen, politics editor for The Bulwark. I had a great time talking about the Bragg prosecution of Trump, as well as issues about abortion and the failed attempt to impeach Joe Biden.

Having survived the Brett Kimberlin episode and prosecuted Mexican Mafia figures and such, I was not eager to be on camera, so Mona gave me a pass and let me keep my camera off. But you can listen to the audio at the home page for the podcast, here. You should be able to listen without a subscription. The episode can also be viewed on YouTube with a sort of hilarious looking silhouette of a fella in a suit in the shadows to represent me.

My goal was to avoid just blathering without purpose. I wanted any listener to come away knowing some facts or set of facts that they did not know going in. Let me know how you think I did on that score.

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First new item

Arizona’s new but old abortion law:

The Arizona Supreme Court gave the go-ahead Tuesday to prepare to enforce a long-dormant law that bans nearly all abortions, drastically altering the legal landscape for terminating pregnancies in a state likely to have a key role in the presidential election.

The law predating Arizona’s statehood provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Arizona’s highest court suggested doctors can be prosecuted under the 1864 law, though the opinion written by the court’s majority didn’t explicitly say that.

The Tuesday decision threw out an earlier lower-court decision that concluded doctors couldn’t be charged for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The attorney general said she will not enforce the law. The abortion ban won’t go into effect immediately.

The middle ground view on abortion in the U.S. continues to be allowing a reasonable period of time in which an abortion is legal, exceptions for rape and/or incest, and if the mother’s life is endangered.

Even MAGA candidates running for office are flip-flopping and pushing back on Arizona’s new law:

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake is actively lobbying state lawmakers to overturn a 160-year-old law she once supported that bans abortion in almost all cases, a source with knowledge of her efforts told CNN.

Lake is pushing for GOP lawmakers in her home state to repeal the law while leaving in place legislation signed in 2022 by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey that would restrict abortion to within the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy.

Second news item

The level of childish self-centeredness is a sad commentary on today’s pro-Palestinian protesters:

A graduation dinner at the home of the University of California Berkeley Law School’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky devolved into an ugly incident after a Palestinian American Berkeley Law student who was invited to the dinner picked up a microphone and stood before the gathering…The purpose of this cartoon was to encourage students to protest a student dinner that Chemerinsky was scheduled to hold at his home.

About that dinner, as described by Chemerinsky:

On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for the dinner. All had registered in advance. All came into our backyard and were seated at tables for dinner. While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.

The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.

Note:

Remarkably, the student said she had a First Amendment right to protest in Erwin’s home. Erwin, ever the teacher, actually said “the First Amendment does not apply.”

SMDH.

This clip shows the protester was asked to leave repeatedly and refused, even after the homeowners threatened to call police. She held on to the mic, risking pulling an older woman down. She said that because she was a Muslim women, she could not be touched. pic.twitter.com/hrvQ38J7Ep

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) April 11, 2024

Third news item

Ukraine in a vicious quandary:

Forced back, Ukraine is now digging in to stop a collapse across the war’s front lines as Russian attacks and American delays leave Kyiv and its allies to confront the possibility of a painful defeat.

A $61 billion aid package has been stuck in Congress for months, leaving Ukraine exposed on the front lines — running out of ammunition and men — while its energy system now faces an onslaught that is exposing its depleted air defenses.

The shortages forced Kyiv’s military to withdraw from a key eastern city in February, and with no progress in Washington, Ukrainian soldiers are now desperately trying to hold on to their positions along some 600 miles of the front line.

“Nothing has changed: We did not have any shells then, we don’t have any shells now,” said artillery sergeant Andriy, who was part of Kyiv’s retreat from Avdiivka in February after months of intense fighting. “The Russians continue to push in packs, without stopping,” Andriy, who did not want his last name revealed as he was not authorized to speak publicly, told NBC News last week.

Reportedly, Speaker Mike Johnson is in talks with the White House about advancing an aid package. However, it doesn’t look too hopeful:

House Republican Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that Johnson had been talking with White House officials about a package that would deviate from the Senate’s $95 billion foreign security package and include several Republican demands. It comes after Johnson has delayed for months on advancing aid that would provide desperately needed ammunition and weaponry for Kyiv, trying to find the right time to advance a package that will be a painful political lift.

“There’s been no agreement reached,” Scalise said. “Obviously there would have to an agreement reached not just with the White House, but with our own members.”

Two things: Johnson faces pressure from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has threatened to oust him as speaker if he pushes ahead with Ukraine funding, and per the report:

The Republican speaker is set to travel to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Friday to meet with Trump and has been consulting him in recent weeks on the Ukraine funding to gain his support — or at least prevent him from openly opposing the package.

This:

Congressional Republicans intend to travel to Normandy to honor the D-Day dead. But that gesture will be hollow—and worse than hollow—if they have failed to act to help the people of Ukraine in their life-and-death struggle.

Fourth news item

O.J. Simpson passed away yesterday after battling cancer. Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman, whom Simpson was accused of killing, responded to the news of Simpson’s death:

Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, capping off what legal analysts described at the time as the “trial of the century.”

…

“The only thing I have to say is, it’s just further reminder of Ron being gone all these years,” Fred Goldman said in a phone interview. “It’s no great loss to the world. It’s a further reminder of Ron’s being gone.”

It’s funny how those of us of a certain age remember exactly where we were when the infamous chase on the 405 freeway happened.

Fifth news item

U.S. officials warn Israel:

Israel is bracing for a worst-case scenario that U.S. officials believe could materialize within just hours — the possibility of a direct attack on Israeli soil by Iran in retaliation for a strike almost two weeks ago that killed seven Iranian military officers. Iran has vowed to take revenge for Israel killing its commanders, who were hit by an April 1 strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria’s capital.

Two U.S. officials told CBS News that a major Iranian attack against Israel was expected as soon as Friday, possibly to include more than 100 drones and dozens of missiles aimed at military targets inside the country.

The officials said it would be challenging for the Israelis to defend against an attack of such a magnitude, and while they held out the possibility that the Iranians could opt for a smaller-scale attack to avoid a dramatic escalation, their retaliation was believed to be imminent.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

I first encountered this last month in The Spectator but didn’t bother to write about it, but now that National Review has fleshed it out in greater detail I think this is a good opportunity to discuss Senator Bernard Sanders’ (Democrat Socialist – Vermont) truly batty idea to use federal legislation to lower the workweek from 40 to 32 hours while requiring that companies keep workers’ wages at the current levels. In other words, Lunchpail Larry and Hairnet Heidi would receive their current paycheck for working only 80% of their current workload. Overtime pay would begin on the worker’s thirty-third weekly hour, not the forty-first weekly hour spelled out in current law.

I don’t have to tell readers of this blog (with perhaps a few exceptions) what an ignorant and truly fanciful idea this is. We’ve known for a long time that the Granite State Gramsci was an economic dunderhead, a freeloader who has spent most of his adult life on the public payroll, an ideologue who has zero clue as to how private enterprise works and who labors (but not really) under a Marxist assumption that economic nirvana comes about when workers are paid more to accomplish less. To be fair, if I had drawn a legislator’s paycheck for most of my life I might be inclined to believe the same, but that’s a discussion for another time.

It doesn’t really faze me much to know that we have a United States Senator so woefully ignorant in the working of markets, so easily swayed by garbage academic studies conducted by disingenuous hacks intent upon muddying the waters with half-baked nonsense, so smugly certain of government’s ability to discover and implement the perfect solution to all that ails us. But let’s not discuss Elizabeth Warren just now, and please allow me keep the attention upon the elderly Maple Syrup Maoist. Bernard Sanders is a particular kind of useless, a shallow thinker recycling ideas that have failed elsewhere for the past 150 years as well as a rank phony and utter hypocrite living the high life while pretending to be a man of the people, even as the fruits of his ideology ensure that the people suffer from oppressive government. Writing at The Spectator, Charles Lipson sees no end to unintended consequences of Comrade Sanders’ meddling:

What do you think would actually happen if such Bernie’s law were passed, enforced and found constitutional? (None of those would actually happen, of course.) The immediate effects would be another 25 percent price increase for labor-intensive products, a huge burden on low-income consumers and an additional incentive to replace more expensive workers with machines and computers.

The substitution of capital for labor is an on-going process, but Bernie would supercharge the effort and create incentives for innovators to come up with products, machines and computer programs that performed those tasks at lower costs. The more expensive the tasks, the greater incentive to figure out ways to save money on them.

Bernie’s Magic Pay Raise would create a major incentive to hire people off-the-books (for the true market price) or to have them work extra hours that way. It would create new incentives for employers to hire workers as individual subcontractors, rather than wage workers. And, of course, it would lead to tens of thousands of court cases where employees were sued for violating the new wage rules. Since the wages would be above market rates (otherwise there would be no need for a mandate), the yearly increases would lag inflation so that real wages would gradually return to market rates.

Just so, and the ability of progressives to ignore the pretty obvious unintended consequences of their nutso legislative daydreams speaks to either cluelessness or dishonesty, or perhaps even both. For his part, Kevin Hassett at National Review eviscerates the “academic” studies used to bolster the insipid case for less work at the same wage:

As for the workweek, the 2023 study that has been cited extensively in the media was performed by researchers from Boston College, the University of Cambridge, and a self-described “progressive” think tank based in the U.K. called Autonomy. The study’s key finding is that 92 percent of the 61 surveyed companies (which were all in Britain) reported that they were continuing the four-day workweek after a six-month trial in 2022, and 18 companies said that this change would be permanent. For the 24 companies that supplied sufficient data, revenues on average went up 35 percent over a comparable period in a previous year.

How could the results be so positive? One sign is that the participating companies (11 percent of which were charities or non-profits) do not appear to have been randomly selected for the trial, but rather were “recruited.” In other words, the study examines the impact of the four-day workweek on companies that wanted to try it. A sign of possible sample-selection bias can be seen in a footnote disclosing that, “Initially, 70 companies had signed up to take part in the pilot — however, 9 of these did not begin the trial.” The most common reason for this was “a sense that the organization was not sufficiently prepared. . . . Other reasons include[d] difficulties measuring performance in some departments, struggles with the ‘great resignation,’ and two companies who decided shorter working hours were not right for them.” Of course, companies that really need workers to show up for the full five days would not have signed up in the first place.

Imagine you are considering a new weight-loss pill which claims to yield the most productive results yet observed. Would you be interested in knowing if the 100 people who had tested the regimen were volunteers who had eagerly signed up for the study and perhaps — just perhaps — had also at the same time instituted of regimen of healthier eating and moderate exercise, versus 100 people who were forced into the study and might resent having to participate? Doesn’t this seem similar to hand-selecting 61 eager companies willing to try out a 32 hour week versus foisting it upon the entire business world irrespective of participant buy-in?

And when you dig into the study, plenty more red flags emerge. In addition to the self-described “progressive” think tank, the study was conducted with the help of a New Zealand-based company called 4 Day Global and a UK outfit known as 4 Day Week Campaign. I don’t know about you, but those names make me suspect that both groups had incentive to ensure that the 32-hour workweek was successful. They recruited 70 companies for the pilot, but nine of them apparently couldn’t get their shit together and had to bow out, suggesting that the transition isn’t particularly easy to implement in all cases. Furthermore, the survey admits that “between 44-51 [participating organizations] provided survey data for the performance analysis of this report.” Excuse me? What the hell happened to the other 9-16 companies? And what does it tell us that they can’t even zero in on a precise number between 44 and 51? “Well, it might have been 44 organizations, but it could have been 46 or 48, perhaps 49 or 51.” What sort of data collection nonsense did these clowns employ? Presumably they mean that there were three separate phases of data collection, and not all organizations participated in each phase. Is this study starting to sound more and more like utter junk?

Finally, what if a mere three of the 61 participants had a really bad experience and ended up closing shop or laying off employees. After all, there are apparently at least ten participants who gave no data at all, and five participants confirmed that they no longer organize around a 32-hour workweek. And remember that these are companies who wanted to be a part of this study. If just three of them closed or had significant layoffs, you’re looking at anywhere up to five percent of employees in the study losing their jobs because of the shift to a 32-hour workweek (assuming that the size of the organizations is averaged across all participants). If that failure rate was the norm and if moving to a 32-hour workweek jumped the U.S. unemployment rate from the current 3.8% up to 8.8% in just one year’s time, would that really be considered an acceptable consequence of giving people one more day off per week? Given the smallish size of this study, the fact that the researchers don’t have a full picture of what happened to every single participant again speaks to the shoddiness of the methodology and the unreliability of this whole endeavor.

Thanks to some apparent skittishness among Senate Democrats at considering this bill in an election year and the fact that the House is at least nominally still under the control of the GOP, we can be reasonably sure that the 32-hour workweek isn’t coming any time soon. But today’s socialist flights of fancy have a crazy tendency to end up being tomorrow’s standard Democrat orthodoxy, so look for this crackpot Vermonter’s idea to be around long after the old codger has shuffled off to the one place where socialism actually works.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

This story is one week old; somehow I missed it when it was published in CalMatters last Thursday. I heard about it today on the wonderful “Radio Free California” podcast and found the story too insightful not to share it with everyone. As usual, bolded emphasis comes from me:

For their 2004 home opener, the San Francisco Giants invited a special guest to throw the ceremonial first pitch: Gavin Newsom, then just a few months into his first term as mayor of San Francisco.

As Newsom took the pitcher’s mound, wearing dress shoes and a button-down shirt underneath his custom Giants jersey, the announcer informed the crowd that “he played first base for the University of Santa Clara and was drafted by the Texas Rangers.”

The introduction was quickly overshadowed by Newsom nearly hitting a photographer with the ball. But it left a lasting impact on a few attendees that day — a group of former Santa Clara University baseball players who were struck by the glowing treatment of Newsom’s resume.

“It’s kind of the standing joke that Newsom played on the team,” said Vince Machi, who arrived at Santa Clara in 1985, the same year as Newsom, and played baseball for three years. “There’s always been kind of a joke between the guys who stay in touch.”

[. . .]

Through his rise over the intervening two decades, his baseball career has provided Newsom a triumphant narrative to push back on the perception that his upbringing was privileged and easy: The high school standout scouted by the major leagues, who overcame his dyslexia and academic shortcomings to earn a partial scholarship to Santa Clara University before an injury forced him to find a new purpose.

[. . .]

Newsom told the story himself again in January on the podcast Pod Save America: Because of poor test scores, he was headed to community college until he got a call from the Santa Clara University baseball coaches. “It was literally the ticket to a four-year university. It changed my life, my trajectory,” he said.

But former coaches and teammates said that biography, repeated again and again through interviews and glossy magazine profiles and coverage of his 2021 baseball-themed children’s book on overcoming dyslexia, has inflated Newsom’s baseball credentials, giving the impression that he was a more accomplished player than he was.

Most notably, Newsom never played an official game for Santa Clara University; he was a junior varsity recruit who played only during the fall tryouts his freshman and sophomore years, then left the baseball program before the regular season began. He does not appear on the Broncos’ all-time roster or in media guides published by the athletic department to preview the upcoming season.

Gavin Newsom is a liar about things both great and small. He is, I will remind you, a man who claimed to have gone into alcohol rehabilitation when his first marriage floundered in the aftermath of reports of his infidelity, only to later acknowledge that he had not actually checked into a rehab facility and remained a social drinker. He is the poster boy for the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do stereotype of obnoxious politician, repeatedly being discovered engaging in actions he has otherwise denounced. And of course, contrary to his stories of being raised by a single mom (after she and his father divorced) and barely being able to make ends meet, we hear a story about how he really managed to get into Santa Clara University despite a mediocre academic record (spoiler alert: it likely was not for his prowess as a ballplayer):

A deeper look at his recruitment also reveals that Newsom’s admission to Santa Clara University — like so many of his formative opportunities — was substantially boosted by friends and acquaintances of his father, William Newsom, a San Francisco judge and financial adviser to the Gettys, the wealthy oil family. One associate connected Newsom to the baseball program when he was in high school, while his father’s best friend, then a member of the university’s board of regents, wrote him a letter of recommendation.

The man is the walking, talking embodiment of the “privileged white male” whom progressives (especially feminists and the racial grievances crowd) are forever demonizing. Only Gavin actually deserves it. And his “ex-teammates” — or, you know, the guys with whom he attended a few practices and perhaps played a few scrimmage games — have a none-too-forgiving view of the governor’s decades-long habit of allowing his baseball history to be so grossly inflated:

Some Broncos players from the era, who said they still regularly get asked about Newsom when people find out they played baseball at Santa Clara, wanted to correct the record.

“He didn’t earn it. He didn’t earn the right to say it,” said Kevin Schneider, who pitched for two seasons and now runs a pitching academy in San Francisco. “I worked my ass off. So did everyone else on that team. For him to just go all these years, to say he did something he didn’t that takes not just talent but also dedication and effort and sacrifice, it’s not right.”

The story goes on with more detail about young Gavin’s high school baseball career. He was likely “scouted” by some Bay Area baseball talent evaluators who scouted hundreds of kids throughout Northern California each year, but was nowhere talented enough to be drafted or signed as a free agent straight out of high school. The story of his acceptance to SCU weaves between the coaching staff’s very moderate interest in him as an athlete and the important people who contacted the university on the boy’s behalf with letters of recommendation, including ex- and future-governor Jerry Brown and Newsom Family friend John Mallen, who just so happened to be on the Board of Regents of the university. Another family friend, investment banker and former SCU ballplayer Bill Connolly is thought to be the person who first contacted the coaching staff and encouraged them to recruit the Redwood City high schooler. Mr. Connolly just so happened to be a major financial supporter of SCU baseball, which may have helped Gavin secure a $500 athletic scholarship.

Read the whole story if so inclined. The governor has for years refused any and all requests to talk in detail about his baseball past, and his press agents repeatedly claim that their boss has consistently been truthful about his playing days (he hasn’t), that he was a legitimate recruit (he might have been, but 13 freshmen were on the roster for SCU in the 1985-86 season and none of them were named Gavin Newsom), and that any misconceptions about the length and breadth of the governor’s baseball career at SCU is somebody else’s mistake, but not theirs. In that latter claim, Team Newsom uses the same excuse that Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut trotted out to explain away how he managed to build a political career being described as “a Vietnam War combat veteran” when his whole military service had been performed statewide: somebody else said it, and I just never corrected the record.

Actually, the story as told by CalMatters suggests a lot which comports with what we know about Gavin Newsom’s character. At least one former SCU ballplayer of that era remembers Newsom as a fairly gifted athlete, but one who didn’t really seem to apply himself to the rigor of NCAA athletics, hoping instead to get by on natural ability and luck. Newsom would undergo ulnar nerve surgery in the fall of 1985, yet for whatever reason didn’t bother to rehabilitate his arm under the supervision of the SCU training staff or coaches, which suggests he was already disassociating from the team. Perhaps he determined that the grind of college athletics was just too much in those days before the NCAA placed limits on the amount of practice time to which athletes could be subjected. But if that’s the case then he’s been dishonest for years in claiming that the end of his baseball career was traumatic and left him lacking a sense of purpose.

Either way, it’s an interesting story and continues to paint a picture of a person who places far more stock in being somebody than in doing something. In our messed up times a chronic narcissist like him will probably eventually end up in the White House, perhaps sooner rather than later.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

California, if nothing else, is an abject lesson in the perils of living in a mono-party state. Democrats have dominated the state legislature since 1975, save for a brief respite in 1995-96 when the GOP had a narrow Assembly majority, though a quisling GOP Assemblyman voted to keep Democrat Willie Brown as Assembly Speaker. But other than that fluke of political chicanery, it’s been Democrats running things in the capitol building, and for most of the time since 2013 they have enjoyed a super-majority which allows them absolute power to steamroll their political opponents.

Thus, it will come as no surprise to anyone that part of that steamroller is the ability to avoid having members ever cast a “no” vote. A piece from CalMatters explains how this works, and provides ample clues to why it ought to be considered an affront to democracy:

Mike Fong has cast more than 6,000 votes since he joined the state Assembly in 2022 and never once voted “no.” Pilar Schiavo is newer to the Assembly, but she has yet to vote “no” after more than 2,000 opportunities.

Remarkably, their Democratic colleagues in the Legislature are not much different. Using our new Digital Democracy database, CalMatters examined more than 1 million votes cast by current legislators since 2017 and found Democrats vote “no” on average less than 1% of the time.

Why? It’s not something they want to talk about. Democrats have had super-majorities in both legislative chambers since 2019, so most votes involve bills from their political colleagues. But the legislative leaders and lawmakers contacted by CalMatters declined repeated requests to explain a pattern that might appear like a rubber stamp for deals made out of public view. And it seems to be sanctioned by leaders.

“There’s only two fucking buttons on your desk: There’s a green button, and there’s a red button,” then-Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon told the California Labor Federation last year in remarks reported by Politico. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the green button is the labor button. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the green button means you’re doing the right thing, and the red button means that you’re an asshole.”

Rendon’s office declined to comment or make him available for an interview.

That’s a pretty good outline of why the California Legislature has become such a joke. Instead of casting a “no” vote on a contentious issue that might rile up a key constituency of the Democrat caucus, legislators remain silent at strategic moments, knowing that their party has enough votes to spare. This allows the legislator to have it both ways: no record of him supporting a bill which might anger one important lobby group, yet also no record of him voting against the bill which might anger another important lobby group. The piece points out that last year there were 15 bills which died on the Assembly floor, not because they were voted down but for a lack of sufficient numbers of Democrats willing to go on record with a “yes” vote.

And this gamesmanship often happens on very important bills, the most notorious example of which was last summer, when anti-incarceration leftists in the Assembly withheld votes in a committee to advance a bill which increased penalties for people convicted of trafficking minor children. Fortunately in this case the media took notice and the outcry was enough to embarrass Democrats into reconsidering and ultimately passing the measure. It’s worth noting that the initial inclination was to let it die, not from receiving a majority of “no” votes, but from failing to receive enough “yes” votes as cowardly ideologues refuse to cast a controversial vote either way.

And even when a majority politician does go on the record with a vote, they reserve the right to revoke that vote if it doesn’t turn out to be necessary:

In another example last year, the former chairperson of the Assembly Public Safety Committee cast a “no” vote to kill a bill, AB 367, that would have led to longer prison sentences for fentanyl dealers. Seconds later, he withdrew his vote after all five of his fellow Democrats on the committee killed the bill by not voting.

The then-chairperson, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Los Angeles Democrat who is running for Los Angeles City Council when his term expires this year, didn’t return a message from CalMatters.

He told the committee last spring that he was a mortician during the crack cocaine epidemic, so he empathized with families who lost loved ones to fentanyl, but he sided with activists who testified that people of color have unfairly and disproportionately borne the brunt of harsh sentences for drug crimes.

“Our communities were decimated by the War on Drugs,” he said.

I’m sure that many of his constituents might point out to Assemblyman Jones-Sawyer that their communities are also “decimated” by the crisis of opioid addiction. Nevertheless, I can almost respect him for casting the “no” vote (even if I mostly disagree with him on his rationale), but I have nothing but contempt for his decision to change his vote to “not voting” once it became clear the bill wouldn’t pass the committee. That is the sort of garbage which understandably gives the public such a low opinion of our elected officials.

The article goes on to record the huge number of Democrats who fail to vote rather than vote “no” on bills, and lists some whose numbers are ridiculously out of whack. The new Assembly Speaker, Robert Rivas, has cast only nine “no” votes in his more than 12,000 recorded votes over the past six years, compared to 673 times in which he failed to vote. Naturally he and other vote-shirkers did not respond to the reporter’s request for comment.

Republicans fail to vote at a higher rate than even Democrats do, but given that they are the super-minority party and have very little influence on the bills that reach committee desks and the chamber floors, it’s somewhat more understandable if not really that admirable. James Gallagher, the Assembly’s Republican leader, told CalMatters that oftentimes the Republicans might be interested in supporting a certain bill, except they have concerns about the language of the legislation or else want to address potential unintended consequences of the bill. Of course those concerns are almost always ignored by the majority and Republicans are not given the opportunity to offer amendments. Thus, even though Republican members don’t necessarily oppose a particular bill, they might have enough ambivalence about it to decide that neither a “yes” nor a “no” vote is appropriate. Assemblyman Gallagher suggests that instead of allowing for the non-voting option, members should be forced to formally announce that they are abstaining from voting, since that would clarify whether the member was absent from the chamber that day or whether they were present and not willing to go on the record.

But I like what former Democrat Assemblyman Mike Gatto has to say. While acknowledging that oftentimes withholding a vote avoids angering an activist group or risking reprisals from party leadership or just disappointing a friendly colleague, he still counsels fortitude: “When people talk about how a very strange or poorly conceived proposal made it all the way through the Legislature, the answer is because very few people stood up and said, ‘This is bunk.’ When people do, and they do it with something as clear and unambiguous as a ‘no’ vote, it encourages other people to have the same courage to tell a lawmaker, politely, that this idea might not be the best one.”

Amen to that.

– JVW