By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2024-11-25 22:47:01 | Updated at 2024-11-26 00:44:15
2 hours ago
Iconoclast: Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Narrative Collapsing
Jan. 6 was not “an insurrection,” but “a protest that became a riot when a woefully insufficient security plan collapsed,” argues Jonathan Turley at The Hill.
Nancy Pelosi’s “House Select Committee to investigate Jan. 6” pushed the narrative that it “ was an attempt to overthrow our democracy by Trump and his supporters,” but “fostered false accounts” and dismissed evidence that “confirmed that Trump did, in fact, offer the deployment of the National Guard in anticipation of the protest.”
Now a new report “shows that it was the Defense Department that delayed the eventual deployment of National Guard in the critical hours of the riot.”
“None of this means that Trump” is “without fault in this matter,” but “these reports only further highlight what we still do not know about that day.”
From the right: Democrats Deaf to Voters
“The first step to any recovery is admitting you have a problem,” argues The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley. Yet Democrats “won’t admit that their policies are the cause.”
From his “bubble,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom “ordered a special legislative session to ’Trump-proof’ California’s progressive policies, such as its electric-vehicles mandate.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul “revived a $9 tax on commuters driving into lower Manhattan” days after Trump’s win.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “is seeking to raise taxes on homeowners” to “pay the city’s soaring pension bills.”
Those “high taxes are driving off businesses and residents.” Democrats may “recognize their political problem but their solution is to pour another shot.”
Culture critic: Dems’ Disconnect on Trans Debate
“In a parallel universe,” snarks The Free Press’ Peter Savodnik, “progressives would be rallying around” Rep. Seth Moulton for expressing fear that trans athletes could injure his daughters in sports.
Yet “in this universe,” they “hate him.”
Progressives “have called him a ‘Nazi cooperator,’ ‘transphobic,’ and ‘offensive,’ ” and demanded he resign.
Tuft University’s poli-sci chairman threatened to bar students from interning in his office.
Moulton just sees the “disconnect between the party’s activist base and the tens of millions of voters it counts on to win national elections,” blasting those who won’t “even tolerate debate on such issues.”
“The only way forward now, Moulton said, is for the Democratic Party to reclaim its liberal soul — its appetite for arguments.”
Science desk: Rx for Real Science at FDA
“Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration,” notes Public’s Alex Gutentag.
Makary has a “track record of standing up to the pharmaceutical industry” on opioids and other issues and was “right on key issues” during COVID, like community masking and vaccine mandates — where authorities’ errors “severely harmed trust in public health institutions.”
In office, “Makary must work to depoliticize the FDA” and ensure it’s “focused on science, high-quality evidence, and thorough safety monitoring” and to end the “conflicts of interest” that are “not the exception at the FDA” but the rule, where a revolving door between the agency and big pharma operates.
Only then will the FDA “function like a real regulator again.”
Defense beat: NATO Unready for ‘Hybrid War’
“Russia’s hybrid-warfare model — the integration of numerous non-military means of conflict and proxy wars, backed by the threat of military force, to achieve strategic goals” — poses a huge challenge to NATO, which is organized “to deter against an invasion or nuclear attack on Europe,” warns Patrick Hess at UnHerd.
Since the Ukraine war began, Moscow has employed an “escalating string” of “low-threshold, non-military and plausibly deniable tactics” against European countries.
These include “sabotage and arson, GPS-signal jamming, disinformation campaigns, weaponised people-smuggling, and phone-hacking,” all “deployed to disrupt, confuse, and blur the lines between peace and wartime.”
“As Europe prepares to take primary responsibility for its own security, this new order must include a coherent strategy to deal with Moscow’s hybrid threats, including how and when to respond.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
