From the left: Pelosi’s Dubious Squad Disses
Susan Page’s new book holds fresh examples of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “publicly demeaning the Squad,” and it “really isn’t a good look,” The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi avers. For one thing, “it’s a little bizarre” to talk of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “as a ‘one-person show,’ when she’s part of something that’s called the Squad.” Plus, “government is still very much a one-type-of-person show,” full of millionaires and relatives of “former politicians.” Pelosi “herself is part of a political dynasty: Her dad was a congressman and a three-term mayor of Baltimore.” And: “It’s easy to dismiss social justice as ‘purity politics’ when, like Pelosi, you have a net worth of $114 million.” Whereas “AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are still paying back student loans. . . . We need more politicians like this.”
Libertarian: Michigan’s Permanent ‘Emergency’
Michigan has implemented some of the most severe pandemic restrictions in the country, and the state now “wants to make its emergency rules for businesses permanent,” worries Jarrett Skorup at Reason. Dating to last spring, many of the rules “are based on outdated scientific knowledge about how COVID-19 spreads,” and “the word ‘vaccine’ doesn’t even appear.” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been fighting limitations on her power since the beginning, using loopholes to claim “unilateral control over the state’s pandemic response for however long she alone determined was necessary” — even after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that she couldn’t extend emergency orders indefinitely. Whitmer is determined to prove that “one person can control the lives of all 10 million Michigan residents to an enormous extent not only during a declared state of emergency, but potentially for years going forward.”
Education desk: Joe’s ‘Race-Theory’ Push
“The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal,” warns Stanley Kurtz at National Review. President Biden’s Department of Education wants to give grant priority to “diverse” initiatives, such as The New York Times’ 1619 Project and “the work of critical race theorist [Ibram X.] Kendi,” which calls for “massive” expansion of “reverse discrimination.” Even “more dangerous” is the proposed Civics Secures Democracy Act, which seeks to impose “leftist action civics and critical race theory on even red states.” The legislation “must be stopped,” but states should also bar such curriculum in classrooms and teacher training. “We are talking about teaching young children to feel guilt and anguish simply because of the color of their skin.”
Foreign desk: The Kremlin’s Killing Navalny
The “Kremlin is slowly squeezing the life out of Alexei Navalny in prison,” laments The Wall Street Journal editorial board. “The 44-year-old critic of Vladimir Putin has been languishing in Russia’s notorious IK-2 prison since March 11 on trumped up charges of violating his parole” — by daring “to recover in Germany” after government agents poisoned him — “on a previous phony charge.” He is now on hunger strike after prison officials refused him “treatment for other ailments.” President Biden sent “mixed signals” by “inviting the autocrat he has called a ‘killer’ for a leader-to-leader summit, even as” Navalny’s health worsens. “The Free World — if we can still use that locution in the Age of Woke — needs to find its voice again on behalf of courageous dissenters like Alexei Navalny.”
Populist: The Enduring Trump Coalition
“Trump 2020” signs still dot middle- and working-class neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, reports the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, a sight that would no doubt prompt establishment GOPers to conclude that “these people were Trump cultists.” In fact, it’s the other way around: Donald Trump didn’t form the ferment that sent him to the White House — “he was the result of it.” These are Republicans, Democrats and independents who believed, and continue to believe, that DC elites don’t represent them, and they signaled their discontent by voting Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. And they keep the signs up “because it is their only way to show the political class that they are not going away.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
