Biowar beat: A Suspect Chinese Lab Here
On Monday, police announced they’d collected hazardous biological material that sent a cleaning lady to the hospital from a Las Vegas residence, reports National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The residence’s owner, Jia Bei Zhu, “is a Chinese citizen who was indicted” for selling unapproved COVID test kits. But Zhu apparently had also operated other biolabs containing transgenic mice and pathogens, and engaged in “unknown pathogen-related activity” while receiving “unexplained payments” from China. “Clearly, he wasn’t just running a scam” to sell Chinese test kits. And it’s “hard to believe” no one in China’s government “had any idea what Jia Bei Zhu was doing with his biolab”: That it paid him “more than $1.3 million suggests” Chinese officials knew he was “doing something they wanted done.”
Schools watch: Accountability, Not Cash, Is Key
Chris Talgo at The Hill counters the endless claims that “that public schools are woefully underfunded”: “In 2023, the federal, local, and state governments spent $946 billion on education” — up from “$751 billion in 2019.” But the cash didn’t go “to hiring and keeping great teachers.” From 2002 to ’23, “the number of ‘student support services’ employees grew” 125%. “Total education spending has increased substantially over the past two decades,” while “student performance has declined.” With fewer administrators, non-public schools “embrace innovation and experimentation,” with “costs far less” than what’s spent to “educate a student in most public systems.” “Private and charter schools have to be accountable to parents, because market forces apply to them” — making school choice “the best answer to our education crisis.”
Eye on NYC: Cut the Bloated Education Budget
If Mayor Mamdani “wants to find inefficiencies” in city spending, “he should begin with” the city Department of Education, advises City Journal’s Danyela Souza Egorov. The DOE budget “has grown by more than $1 billion yearly since 2019,” even as the student population has dropped 10% “since its peak in 2010.” Pausing the class-size law, which “primarily benefits wealthier, higher-performing schools,” “could save the city $1 billion.” Look to “review the growing number of underenrolled schools” with an eye toward closing many, and “merge and consolidate the city’s 32 school districts” to “generate savings” and “make school administration more efficient.” A city in fiscal crisis “should not continue to finance a school system that each year spends more and more money to educate fewer and fewer students.”
From the right: Stick to the Economy, GOP
President Trump “came to Iowa last month for an economic speech” his team hoped would “recenter the discussion,” but “it didn’t,” laments The Wall Street Journal’s Karl Rove. Trump made two mistakes: He “strayed from the subject,” talking of “stolen elections,” “immigration,” “attacking his predecessor.” And his tone was “triumphal,” claiming the economy is booming even though some people are “suffering.” He should “stop bragging,” as “a reliable Politics 101 strategy” for Republicans “involves three messaging steps”: Make clear Democrats were responsible for inflation, describe how Trump and the GOP “are strengthening the economy” — i.e., through tax cuts and lower inflation — and “stress there’s more to be done.” “For GOP success this fall, Republicans need a better economic message than what Americans heard from the president.”
Conservative: The ‘Anti-Zionist’ License To Kill
“Extreme pro-Hamas” members of Palestine Action who “broke into an Israeli defense contractor’s factory” in England and “smashed a police officer from behind with a sledgehammer,” were found not guilty by a jury even though “they admitted to breaking in and damaging property,” fumes Commentary’s Seth Mandel. Over there, it seems, “psychotic ‘anti-Zionism’ ” excuses violence or any criminal action as long as opposition to Israel “motivated their violence.” This recalls the the Malian migrant in France who threw an elderly Jewish woman out the window, yet was found not guilty because he claimed he’d been “sent into a violent rage by the sight of [the woman’s] mezuzah.” Ultimately, “the sick man of Europe is Europe.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
