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Liz Cheney

Are Women More Committed To Democracy And Fairness Than Men?

This is a generalization, I know. As Mark Twain is said to have said, "All generalizations are false, including this one." But there is growing evidence that women tend to be more protective of our American democracy than men. They are more willing to put their foot down when partisan schemers try to game the electoral system, mostly by changing the rules or gerrymandering.

A recent sign that women place more value on being a force for good comes out of conservative Utah. Both parties gerrymander, that is, draw voting district boundaries to give unfair advantage to their candidates. But a faith-based group called Mormon Women for Ethical Government wanted to stop that practice. In 2018, they backed Proposition 4, a ballot measure to create an independent districting commission that would prevent gerrymandering. It passed a statewide vote.

The backstory: Utah remains solidly Republican, but its capital, Salt Lake City, has become bluer in recent years. In 2021, the Republican-run legislature drew its own congressional map that split Salt Lake County to favor their party. The women sued.

It takes a certain inner steel to keep things honest when gaming the system might result in a preferred outcome. About 40 percent of the Mormon women's group are registered Republicans, and only 34 percent are Democrats. Their motivation is simply to maintain a level playing field.

"Gerrymandering breaks things," the group's co-executive director Emmy Petty Adams said. "It physically fractures communities. It breaks trust."

The matter has been in and out of courts, and the fight is not over. But because the Utah Supreme Court refused in February to block the new nonpartisan map, the 2026 election will be conducted under the new districts.

Defenders of democratic integrity understand that safeguarding free and fair elections is the best way to guarantee the public good. It's in their interest to ensure that their votes are properly counted.

It was hard to find a more conservative and politically brave House Republican than Wyoming's Liz Cheney. She voted to impeach President Donald Trump after the January 6, 2001 attack on the Capitol and did not flinch before the inevitable blowback. She was also one of only two Republicans to later serve on the House January 6 Select Committee, which investigated the violent rampage and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The other Republican was Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a decorated combat veteran. Cheney ran for another term, undoubtedly knowing that she would lose the Republican primary to Trump's revenge pick. Kinzinger retired from the House.

"If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic," Cheney said shortly before the primary vote, "I'm going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day."

Over in the Senate, Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska voted to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection. Five Republican men did join them: Richard Burr, North Carolina; Bill Cassidy, Louisiana; Mitt Romney, Utah; Ben Sasse, Nebraska; and Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania.

It's important to note, however, that there were 42 male Republicans in the Senate compared with just eight female Republicans. Thus, the men voting for conviction represented only 12 percent of the male Republican caucus, while the two women represented a quarter of its female members. Four of the men subsequently retired. Cassidy remained in office, but come the primary, Trump punished him by endorsing Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA). She went on to become Louisiana's Republican Senate nominee. Cassidy gets credit for putting himself before the voters.

Of course, there are plenty of unprincipled women in politics. No need to list them here. The point is that women seem more invested in keeping politics honest, as a generalization, of course.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

John Galliano and Anna Wintour

A Fashion Queen's Luxury Splendor Can't Quite Conceal Her Moral Squalor

Anna Wintour spent nearly four decades reigning over Vogue magazine. She was chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and its glitzy gala. Wintour is an inspiration for the imperious fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada. With her trademark bob hairdo, sunglasses, and snotty English accent, Wintour has been the style influence who crowns the influencers.

But her honking blunder in choosing designer John Galliano for a solo show has sullied her legacy. Even worse, it was set to open alongside the institute's fundraising red-carpet blowout. Galliano is known for his antisemitic and anti-Asian tirades. France convicted him of a hate-speech crime, and several luxury brands summarily dropped him.

Some Vogue insiders explain that the 76-year-old Wintour suffers from being out of step with the next generation, that she's not current on social media. Others, myself included, believe she is out of step with decency and judgment.

Granted, the fashion business obsesses on outward appearances. That's its business. But balance sheets for companies making chemicals and ball bearings include a line called "goodwill." It's for intangible assets that make people feel good about the brand.

One must suffer a moral deficiency to celebrate a guy who shouts, "I love Hitler" in public places. Those words are vulgar and offensive everywhere, but especially so at institutions with many Jewish patrons and in an industry with a large Jewish presence.

It makes no difference that Galliano is considered one of the designer greats. Or that he often comes off as just a weirdo with his pirate mustache and frozen grimace. Or that he claims to have been under the influence of some inebriant during his outbursts. Or that he issued an apology for "the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities."

That level of sympathy was lacking in Wintour. After Galliano pulled out from the Met show, she issued a statement that "John's decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is."

Wintour's touting of bigots because they're clever with clothes is not limited to this individual. It was found that Rama Duwaji, the fashion-forward wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had provided crude antisemitic illustrations for a book. Her earlier social media posts also trafficked in the N-word and made anti-gay slurs.

But Wintour gushed over the girl's style in the May issue of Vogue: "I'm full of admiration for New York City's new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage" and so forth.

We understand that the rag trade is not overly invested in its players' moral fiber. And there are artists whose views are repugnant, but if they're especially good at the craft, their reputation can be largely restored with the passage of a few decades.

During World War II, Coco Chanel had ties to Nazi officials for whom she did spying. She tried to use the Nazi anti-Jewish property laws to seize control of the perfume business from her Jewish partners. We're talking about Chanel No. 5.

In 1954, at age 70, Chanel regrouped with a successful comeback fashion collection. American women responded eagerly to Coco's new collection. The French were less enthusiastic.

Ask us again about Galliano in 2035.

Wintour offers a reminder that an arbiter of fashion taste and style can harbor the conscience of a slob. Criticize the response to Galliano as shaming, if you must. But some things are shameful.

The Met Gala, long an Olympics of vulgar exhibitionism, does raise money for a good cause. The Galliano affair was bad for the museum and bad for fashion as a culture.

Meanwhile, goodbye Anna Wintour.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

DSA Should Drop The Blue-Collar Cosplay That Working Voters Reject

DSA Should Drop The Blue-Collar Cosplay That Working Voters Reject

Classic Labor Day imagery shows men wearing hard hats and tough women in uniforms. These are Americans who did not build their muscles at a wellness club.

By contrast, actual photos of the Democratic Socialists of America show seas of white faces belonging to college graduates. The only work most of them have done with their hands is typing. But the DSA is run by leaders who pretend otherwise, pushing forward candidates who play-act as tradespeople.

Their costume party doesn't seem to fool actual blue-collar workers. In Democratic primaries, DSA candidates routinely trail behind traditional Democrats among this voting group — and by a lot.

These fake working folk are so transparently phony, you wonder why even the left-wingers buy into it. The best explanations are they like the show, are young and lonely, and see radical politics as a career path to being an influencer.

This month's proletarian-in-drag is Gustavo Gordillo, chairman of New York's DSA chapter. Before he was outed as privileged, Gordillo described himself as a child of struggling immigrants from Peru and as an electrician. It so happens that his father founded an engineering and consulting firm and owns two multimillion-dollar homes in Florida.

Gordillo's parents bought their boy a Brooklyn townhouse now worth $1.4 million through a limited liability corporation. During a gut renovation, Gordillo lived in a rental apartment where he failed to pay rent. His landlord tried to evict him.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani nevertheless chose Gordillo as The Right Stuff to explain his plan for city-owned grocery stores to the public. In a local TV interview, Gordillo rejected the bodegas' complaints that their city-run rivals, unlike them, would be paying no rent or property taxes — and that taxpayers would capitalize them to the tune of $70 million and also subsidize their prices.

Asked on a news show if he thought that was fair to the bodega owners, Gordillo responded that if they couldn't compete with publicly-owned stores then "they shouldn't be in business."

By the way, Gordillo was never a licensed electrician, but you guessed that. He did, however, graduate from Yale with an art degree.

The director of Mamdani's Office to Protect Tenants is the inexplicable Cea Weaver. She famously described "homeownership" as "a weapon of white supremacy." It was subsequently revealed that Weaver's mother lived in a $1.5-million home in Nashville, where the median single-family house is valued at under $500,000.

As implied earlier, real blue-collar voters haven't been taken in by these performances. In Michigan, the radical left candidate Abdul El-Sayed barely scraped a win in the Democratic Senate primary. Michigan doesn't break down the primary vote by education, but a Detroit News poll taken before showed Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of El-Sayed among the non-college-educated by 22 points.

In Maine, Graham Platner, the preppie who claimed to be an oysterman, won the Democratic primary to challenge Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins with DSA support. But confronted with an abuse-of-women charge too far, he had to drop out.

Which is just as well. Polls had Platner trailing Collins by 21 points among voters without a four-year college degree. His Democratic replacement, Troy Jackson, polls a bit better among this group but not well at all. A NYT/Siena poll showed Collins leading Jackson by 18 points among voters without a college degree.

Wonder what the real oyster farmers are thinking.

The left ought to stop hating on Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman. He won a purple-state seat with 46 percent of the non-college vote, a far higher number than Democrats normally get. Fetterman is one reason Democrats might win a Senate majority in the midterms. Not that the fringe cares.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.


As Trump's Power Wanes, Canadians Are Not Alone In Calling His Bluff

As Trump's Power Wanes, Canadians Are Not Alone In Calling His Bluff

Oh good, another war. This time a trade war with Canada and for no other reason than ... what? To give Donald Trump a new stage for big-league bullying? To divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein files? Who knows. Whatever. Trying to humiliate our closest ally does not serve American interests, ya think?

I say "trying" because Trump's powers are much diminished. Canadians are calling Trump's bluff, as are other countries and even some formerly supine Republican lawmakers. And it's getting harder to ignore the loose screws rattling around his head.

We won't go into the particulars of this latest trade dispute. Canada as well as the United States appeared to have thrown in last-minute demands. And Trump's new tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods affect only about 5% of Canada's exports to the U.S.

The bigger story here is the willingness of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to defend his nation's honor even at a cost to his economy.

Moments after the tariffs went into effect, Trump recycled a golden oldie of abuse by posting on Truth Social, "Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!! They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No More!!!"

About our great farmers, Trump has just lowered taxes on foreign beef in an obvious attempt to cut prices for steaks and hamburgers before the midterm elections. The higher prices were a godsend to American cattle ranchers already coping with wildfires, droughts and restrictions on shipments of young Mexican cattle to be fattened in U.S. feedlots.

"You don't put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last," U.S. Cattlemen's Association President Justin Tupper said in response.

Trump keeps saying that the U.S. doesn't need Canadian products. But guess what his new round of tariffs doesn't include? Canadian oil or gas.

Talk of turning Canada into a state is perhaps Trump's most hostile assault on Canadian pride. Trump had referred to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Gov. Trudeau. (He's quite the card.) He called the border between our two countries "an artificially drawn line" and said he would use "economic force" to make a takeover happen.

While visiting the Oval Office last year, Carney said that Canada "is not for sale" and "won't be for sale ever." Trump responded, "Never say never."

Over the weekend, Trump's first vice president, Mike Pence, provided a dose of sobriety. "American consumers pay American tariffs," he said. "My hope is, for the sake of American families and for the sake of the American economy, that what we're looking at here is negotiation and not confrontation in a trade war."

Though Trump's tantrums should fly over the northern border like bad weather systems that will pass, the abuse has long-term effects that have already come back to bite us. Against Trump's wishes, Canada is now doing its separate deals with China. He has threatened a 100 percent tariff on Canada over that.

A recent Angus Reid survey of Canadians found that more than 75 percent wanted Carney to hold his ground, even as 90 percent worried about economic costs. The Canadian pollster has also found that 79 percent of Americans still liked Canadians. But even if Canadians don't think Americans dislike them, the fact remains that the voters elected Trump twice.

Trump just said he'll tack 50% tariffs on vehicles and parts from Canada. A silver lining is that Trump's broadsides have become so unhinged, the prospects of his Republican enablers retaining that much power after November are much reduced.

Trump may be seeming more temporary, but in the meantime, we have another war, a ridiculous trade war.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

David Crowley

Are Mainstream Democrats Taking Back Their Party From The DSA Fringe?

You couldn't find a wackier candidate than Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist vying to become the governor of Wisconsin. She wanted to defund police and abolish ICE, topping it all off with a call to end Thanksgiving. Saturday Night Live couldn't have made her up.

Hong lost the Democratic primary but left behind some sobering thoughts. She finished second by only a hair and against a sterling Democrat with relevant experience. The winner, David Crowley, is the Milwaukee County Executive and an African American born into poverty.

Crowley will face off against Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, a MAGA right-winger who voted against certifying the 2020 election. GOP-aligned groups spent heavily to promote Hong's candidacy in the primary for obvious reasons.

You know who put Crowley over the top? Rural Wisconsin voters.

Over in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed by the fringe-left leaders, beat Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens by a similar tiny margin. She did extraordinarily well in working-class areas in and around Detroit. El-Sayed flew to victory on the wings of college towns.

Could normal Democrats build an alliance between the urban working class and rural voters? That might become a more pressing requirement if El-Sayed loses to Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, which will probably happen. El-Sayed has burned bridges with many Jewish voters, a constituency Democrats have traditionally relied upon. He also has his inflammatory influencer friend, Hasan Piker — who said America deserved 9/11 — hanging around his neck.

Rogers is an establishment Republican who defended the 2020 election results that made Joe Biden president. He has since veered more toward MAGA and won Donald Trump's endorsement in the Republican Party.

But Trump undoubtedly figured that Rogers would have a better chance of victory in this swing state than a fire-breathing right-winger. And a Rogers win in November could keep majority control of the Senate in Republican hands.

Are we done with polls yet? Polls issued right before these primaries showed both Hong and El-Sayed beating their opponents by double digits. The photo-finish results suggest the pollsters know nothing. But belief in their "findings" can alter election outcomes.

A Marquette poll from March showed Crowley supported by only three percent of Democratic primary voters. He left the race, believing that Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez would be the stronger Democrat. He also didn't want to split the mainstream Democrats' votes. When Rodriguez later dropped out due to campaign finance accounting problems, Crowley jumped back in.

Looking forward to 2028, the Democratic National Committee has chosen South Carolina as the site of its first presidential primary. That makes some democratic socialists uncomfortable. In 2020, South Carolina played a major role in making Joe Biden the Democratic nominee over Bernie Sanders. In earlier contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, the generally white and college-educated electorate had sent Sanders toward the head of the pack.

Come South Carolina and the other southern Democratic primaries with their huge African American voting bloc, Biden shot ahead. It wasn't because the voters were "conservative," as Sanders grumbled. It's because they cared more about health coverage, racial fairness, and income inequality than the left's boutique issues: defunding police, transgender rights, and the obsession with identity politics. What did Latinx mean?

Mostly, it was the belief, a correct belief, that Biden could beat Trump, and Sanders could not. Black voters favored Biden over Sanders by four to one.

Moderate Democrats may be finally putting up effective resistance to the highly organized fringe left. Step one is reorganizing primaries to better reflect the preferences of the Democratic mainstream. Step two is getting Democratic normies out to vote. Step three is to build on issues regular people care about. They can do it.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Bernie Sanders

Socialist? Capitalist? Americans Live In A Mixed Economy, Without Labels

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan keeps calling himself a capitalist. And the Democratic Socialists of America keep backing him to the eyeballs.

Why? Because the DSA understands that El-Sayed has to say that to win over even Democrats in a moderate state like Michigan. They firmly expect that once elected, he would do as they say, which happily conforms with what he truly believes.

Confusing? Yes, on purpose. But let's move beyond this war of labels. Let's stop using socialist and capitalist as either compliments or denunciations.

The United States has a mixed economy, as do most modern countries. It has an economic system in which both the government and the private sector control resources. The American government runs public education, Medicare, and the U.S. Postal Service, to name a few programs. They are all taxpayer supported.

Why does a stamp on a letter going from a remote farmhouse in North Dakota to Chicago cost the same as a stamp on a letter sent from one Chicago apartment to another three blocks away? In a purely capitalist system, the stamp's price would have reflected the difference in cost of delivery. The North Dakotan would have had to pay for this service, a lot more. But U.S. law mandates "universal service," which keeps the cost of a stamp fixed. Thus, dense cities subsidize mail delivery in rural areas.

Private companies, such as UPS and FedEx, charge vastly higher prices for delivery to remote places. Note that President Donald Trump has supported selling off the USPS to a private company.

Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through the Social Security Act of 1935 as part of his New Deal program. America was in the jaws of Great Depression, and FDR used the power of the federal government to create jobs, stabilize the financial system and keep the destitute elderly alive.

New York's Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, says he's another FDR. But FDR said, "No one in the United States believes more firmly than I in the system of private business, private property and private profit."

Roosevelt's new government programs were intended to save the capitalist-market system from collapsing, not, to use Mamdani's words, "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism." Where are the heroic peasants of the Soviet agitprop films waving banners?

Socialist Bernie Sanders heralds Sweden as the socialist model, citing its free health care, free college, and so forth. He also says, "I don't think billionaires should exist."

Sanders may not be up to date on Sweden's economy. It is highly capitalist with more billionaires per capita than the United States. The social programs he admires are supported by taxes.

Sweden, meanwhile, has been tightening the rules for receiving government benefits. For example, it's been cutting benefits to those not working. It has also adopted a hyper-restrictive immigration policy. In addition to the shock of a massive influx of people from very different cultures, Swedes rebelled at the impoverished newcomers' claims on its social programs.

The number of migrants entering Sweden was down to 12,000 last year from 117,000 in 2016. And the country is trying to get people already there with residency permits to leave.

What do the "abolish-ICE" Democratic Socialists think of that?

As conservative economist Milton Friedman famously put it, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state."

Here's how it works: Our capitalist-market system generates a huge amount of wealth that can be taxed to pay for social and other programs. A balance must be found between encouraging wealth creation and crafting a tax code able to raise money for desired public needs. That's a lot harder than throwing around dated labels.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

What is the death count under Donald Trump? We're not talking about loss of life in his war with Iran. We're not talking about natural deaths by aging or unpreventable diseases. We mean Americans who die because they refuse safe vaccines that Trump or his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., questions or discourages.

A recent occurrence of death and suffering comes from the refusal by many parents to let doctors give their newborns a vitamin K shot. Infants are naturally deficient in vitamin K, which helps prevent blood clots and internal bleeding, which can be horrific. K is a vitamin, not a vaccine. But ill-informed parents have developed suspicion of anything delivered with a needle.

Vitamin K shots were once routinely given, but now many parents refuse them. In 2024, an estimated 5.2% of American babies were not injected with vitamin K, up from 2.9% in 2017. At least 12 such babies have died, and far more have suffered permanent brain damage. Doctors believe the real numbers are far higher than reported.

Who's to blame — the parents for not studying the matter, or a health department that has cast aspersions on accepted science? Jessica Kirk, a pediatric specialist at a Florida hospital, recalls trying to comfort a grieving parent. "But what I could not bring myself to say to her was, 'There's nothing you could have done.'"

Falling vaccination rates are to blame for America's worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years. Parents are refusing the effective measles, mumps and rubella vaccine over the false claim that it causes autism. Trump is said to be hounding Bobby to look deeper for a link that 138 studies by real scientists could not find. Trump now insists that the shot be broken up into separate injections, based on zero science.

Several children infected with measles died last year, when there were far fewer cases. Many more had to be hospitalized with serious complications.

Trump makes us dizzy complaining that he doesn't get credit for speeding up development of a COVID-19 vaccine -- and then putting "Bobby," a vaccine skeptic with a bizarre past, in charge of Health and Human Services. He gushes about having "a Kennedy" from "the greatest political family" in his administration. What fun that must have been.

Trump never directly discouraged Americans from getting COVID shots. But he kept minimizing the severity of the disease. He said it would "go away" or that it was under control. Trump would not receive the vaccine before cameras. That gave Americans who suspected that vaccines posed dangers more reasons to avoid them.

An estimated 250,000 Americans died unnecessarily from COVID by refusing to be vaccinated after the shots became widely available. Who's to blame? The first Trump administration, or people who didn't seek out expert advice to get vaccinated?

Trump is allegedly unhappy with Bobby for not doing more to fan suspicion of vaccines. Really, RFK Jr. has done quite enough harm already putting Americans' health at risk.

Complicating matters for Trump are new findings from a friendly pollster that vaccine skepticism is highly unpopular with voters. In another survey, 80% of adults said they trusted their doctors most, while only 34% put their faith in Bobby.

Why is Trump pushing doubt in mainstream science when he and his family reportedly get all the shots? Could it be fumes circulating in his 80-year-old head? Could it be a pleasurable jolt of power from persuading people to, in effect, gamble with their lives? That possibility is too grim to contemplate.

Suffice it to say, though, the Trump administration is doing real harm, and some of it is costing American lives.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

The Democratic Socialists of America use people of color as fashion accessories. Sure, they put black or brown faces on ballots, and they talk a big game about racism. But black and brown voters are not choosing their candidates. The DSA national membership chooses, and it is 85% white.

Look at the crowds. In October 2019, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders staged a rally at the Queensbridge housing project, across from Manhattan. Its residents are 47% black, 34% Latino and 10% Asian. News photos showed a nearly unbroken sea of white enthusiasts.

The head of the Queensbridge Resident Association called the organizers "disrespectful." They didn't even bother to place flyers in the buildings.

During the 2020 presidential race, Bernie Sanders rode high in the early Democratic primaries, where voters are mainly comfy whites. But when the primaries moved south, where Democratic voters are overwhelmingly black, he got creamed. In South Carolina, he lost to Joe Biden by 29 percentage points.

Asked to respond to that massive comeuppance, Sanders waved off the importance of those black voters. They were "conservative," he said. "But you know what? We're out of the Deep South now. And we're moving up."

That rankled several prominent black officials. "I was very concerned with that comment," said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. "Black voters in the South are not very conservative" and "essentially dismissing the South was a slight at African American voters."

A recent poll in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary has 67 percent of blacks supporting the white candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens. Only 21 percent back the DSA's Abdul El-Sayed. A prominent El-Sayed supporter, William Lawrence, is on record denouncing black political leaders as a "pillar" of the "capitalist, imperialist" American establishment. Their support of the Democratic leadership, Lawrence said, "defangs the white left."

He really said that.

Sanders has a spotty history on race. He had joined the white flight out of New York City in the 1960s, when a new generation of black activists didn't care to take orders from white liberals. Sanders repaired to Burlington, Vermont, then less than one percent black. There he built a white-dominated socialist movement, using people of color as window dressing from the very start.

In his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' chief black intellectual, Cornel West, called Barack Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface." (Also, a "war criminal.")

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has followed the playbook. He has an odd character named Gustavo Gordillo defending his city-run grocery stores. Co-chair of DSA's New York chapter, Gordillo is an immigrant from Peru who studied "radical Latin American cinema" in college. He tried to move up in the art world, but after apparently not succeeding, decided to try his hand as a DSA celebrity.

Gordillo is now on TV "explaining" Mamdani's plan for government groceries, one costing taxpayers an amazing $30 million. Asked whether it's OK for publicly owned stores to put nearby bodegas out of business, Gordillo chirped that if bringing down prices in the neighborhood "is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn't have been in that business in the first place."

The bodega owners are largely Dominican, Yemeni or from other recent immigrant groups. Their little stores are entrepreneurial ventures that put families on the path of economic advancement. The owners work their tails off long into the night, often confronting criminals bent on everything from shameless shoplifting to armed robbery.

And now Gordillo is on TV arguing that bodega owners who can't compete with stores built with taxpayer dollars — and that don't have to pay rent or property taxes — are somehow deficient businesspeople.

None of the above is made up, I swear.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

A Face in the Crowd is the prophetic 1957 movie about a charismatic drifter "discovered" in an Arkansas jail. The face belongs to "Lonesome" Rhodes, a scoundrel whose folksy act catapults him to national prominence. "Lonesome" (Andy Griffith) abuses women, but the crowd only sees a lovable spinner of down-home yarns. He deflates after getting caught on an open mic mocking his followers as idiots and fools.

Maine's Graham Platner was a face in the crowd, sold to Democrats as a salt-of-the-sea oysterman who actually came from a privileged background. The senatorial candidate survived his sordid history of mistreating women until a plausible accusation of rape finally did him in.

American politics feasts on stories of candidates from humble backgrounds who know what it means to be a working stiff. Some such contenders are uncovered as bums or phonies. But some are the real thing.

They would include Dan Osborn of Nebraska. He is the steamfitter and former union organizer from Omaha running for the senate as an independent against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Osborn now has a decent chance of prevailing in November. His is not a new face. He had run in 2024 as an independent who did surprisingly well against Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. Osborn lost by only 7 points in a state that Donald Trump carried by about 21 points. Osborn clearly has appeal.

After the election, Osborn launched a PAC called the Working Class Heroes Fund. Its stated mission is to support candidates like him, regardless of party label. With Ricketts an heir to a family fortune exceeding $1 billion, Osborn has predictably framed the race as between the "billionaire class" and the working class.

One of his challenges, though, is to minimize the extent to which Democrats openly want him to win. Nebraska Democrats are not running their own candidate and urge their contributors to back Osborn.

To prevail in a conservative state like Nebraska, Osborn needs support from disaffected or moderate Republicans. If elected, he vows not to caucus with either party. And he criticizes Democrats for their focus on white-collar professionals.

Working in his favor is the fact that many Nebraska Republicans are not hard right. Omaha Rep. Don Bacon, for example, is a Republican moderate known for often criticizing Trump. His is a swing district, nationally known as the "blue dot." Seeing himself at a disadvantage among MAGA Republicans and Democrats desperate for a win, Bacon decided not to seek another term.

Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse is a traditional conservative known for his intellect and courteous manners. Sasse was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. He is now bravely confronting Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Trump's job approval rating in Nebraska is evenly divided or slightly underwater. And so a working man fixed on pragmatic solutions would seem a serious challenger.

Arizona Democrats have Katie Hobbs running for reelection as governor. The product of a middle-class family, Hobbs put herself through college. While secretary of state in 2020, she earned national renown for defending Arizona's election results against phony claims of voter fraud.

As governor, she has lured business to her state, which explains her directing ads toward Republicans and independents. Many Arizonans, meanwhile, remain incensed at Trump's shabby treatment of the late Republican icon John McCain.

McCain's widow, Cindy McCain, has publicly endorsed Hobbs against her Republican opponent, Andy Biggs. Tied hand and foot to Trump, Biggs tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Moderate Democrats do have a good shot at winning this November. Electorates may have grown weary of faces in the crowd, entertainers offering colorful tales and little more.

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Yes, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's socialist picks just knocked off some Democratic incumbents in New York City. They included surprising defeats, especially that of Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, whose social media swims with past calls to abolish the police, free prisoners and stop deportations for any reason, presumably including murder.

It's not like Espaillat's district was dominated by the young professionals who flocked to Mamdani. His electorate is 52 percent Hispanic and includes such non-hipster neighborhoods as Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx.

Nonetheless, Mamdani may have seriously misread the national mood when he said right before the primaries: "When does the race for 2028 begin? It starts now." That was an awesome display of grandiosity for a guy who didn't get even 50% of the vote even though he was the official Democratic candidate in a very Democratic city.

The New York primaries may indeed be kicking off the presidential contest in 2028, but not in a way Democrats would like. Look at recent history. Backlash against Donald Trump's erratic governing style returned control of the House to the Democrats in 2018. Similar forces helped Joe Biden to take the presidency from Trump two years later.

The Democratic left sold these results as a thumbs-up for its radical agenda. But those same views — things like defunding police and obsession with transgender issues — turned off the middle America voters who gave Biden his win in 2020.

Two years later, Republicans retook the House majority by weaponizing the dumbest things left-wingers had said. Similar dynamics powered Trump's return to the presidency in the 2024 election. It is dangerous to assume that disgust with Trump translates into a desire to stop immigration enforcement.

The recently elected Mamdani, meanwhile, is enjoying an overly long honeymoon. The reality is sure to overtake the massive publicity he attaches to the smallest of achievements. New Yorkers are noticing that there are still no free buses, as promised. The rents are not frozen. And universal childcare has not happened. Mamdani has also antagonized the financial business leaders, jeopardizing the prospects of the young grads seeking white-collar jobs, that is, much of his base.

Democrats seeking victories in the heartland should fear having the excesses of coastal socialists hanging around their neck. The veteran New York political analyst Errol Louis described the dangers New York's far left pose to the Democrats' future. As an anchor at Spectrum News NY1, he has interviewed them all.

"They've got some ideas that will not sell in Des Moines or in, you know, Cleveland," Louis said. Their strategists tell him that they're "gonna fight, fight, fight ... get themselves arrested, introduce legislation, whether or not it has a chance of getting a hearing or ever becoming law."

Barack Obama understands well the radicals' lack of appeal outside choice urban corridors. He's called out affluent progressives who think they earn halos by pushing polices deemed to help the less fortunate but end up costing Democrats at the polls. They can embrace left-liberal politics without personally paying a price, Obama said last year. "You could still make a lot of money. You could still hang out in Aspen and Milan and travel and have a house in the Hamptons and still think of yourself as a progressive."

Democrats have fine hopes that this year's midterms will deliver at least a House majority. The growing dislike of Trump puts wind in their sails.

Come the 2028 presidential contest, however, Trump will presumably not be running. But the Democrats' aggravating radicals will still be at it. If the race for 2028 starts now, Democrats should be concerned.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

We can thank China that gasoline prices aren't higher than they are.

By last month, China had cut imports of oil by three million barrels a day, the daily consumption of Italy and France combined. China's economy, meanwhile, hums along.

Americans agonize over how the price of oil affects gas at the pump. Were it not for China, a tank of gas would cost considerably more. "China is Propping Up the World Economy by Importing a Lot Less Oil," reads a Wall Street Journal headline.

There are several reasons China has been able to cut oil imports, but one is its move away from gas-powered vehicles into electric vehicles. China has also invested heavily in electric-powered high-speed rail, letting travelers replace oil-guzzling short flights and trips in gas-powered cars with train travel. By 2030, China's EVs could displace 2.7 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.

If the war with Iran is truly over, and it may not be, Americans' price of oil should be coming down. That's already started, but economists warn that the decline will be slow.

Thus, Donald Trump's long crusade against electrified vehicles and promotion of gas-powered ones is hard to explain other than his personal ties with the oil industry. The U.S. is producing more fossil fuel, but much of it is being exported to other countries willing to pay a lot for it. Get this: If Americans want more of their fuel to stay home, they'll have to pay more for it.

Trump hollers that Americans must drill-drill-drill to cushion themselves from the cost of foreign energy. And so what did he do first day back in office? He ordered the Energy Department to restart exports of American-produced natural gas. He also supports exporting U.S. oil, branding it as "energy dominance."

Other than environmentalists, and bless you all, Americans tend not to care what powers their cars. Electricity, gasoline, whale oil ... Buyers of cars or trucks generally prefer whichever option is cheaper. Happily, the energy source that does least damage to the planet is now the less expensive one.

True, it costs more to make electric vehicles than gas-powered ones. However — and this is a big however — the cost to operate EVs is a lot less. And the more gasoline costs, the better the electric car deal becomes.

A Chevy Equinox EV costs about $35,000, but the price for the gas-powered version of the compact SUV is $30,000. But if an Equinox owner in, say, Iowa drives about 11,000 miles a year — the American average — over 10 years, they will be spending nearly $10,000 more to power the gas SUV than the electric one.

We get it. If you must have a new Chevy Equinox right now and can't spare an extra $5,000, then the gas version may be regarded as a necessary purchase. What happens 10 or 15 years down the road can be worried about later.

Electricity prices had also been going up, but nowhere near as much as oil prices. That's because power plants use energy sources other than oil, including hydro, wind, solar and nuclear, in addition to natural gas.

But those who can plan for their economic future should be onto it. And so are countries that do planning, such as China. The U.S. tried under President Joe Biden to electrify the economy, but Trump has undermined almost all that progress. What's promoting American consumers' new interest in electric vehicles is the high price of gasoline.

If this country had made the kind of advances China has, we wouldn't be caring so much about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. On some things, China knows better.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

How is it that the "Saxophone Colossus" Sonny Rollins lived to 95? Aren't jazz musicians supposed to die at tragically early ages? Actually, that's a myth that Rollins and others proved flawed.

It's true that Bix Beiderbecke, king of the cornet, was gone at 28, Charlie Parker at 34, Dinah Washington at 39, John Coltrane at 40. Billie Holiday made it to 44 — not young, but an age that should have been before her time.

Some musicians, classical and rock, as well as jazz, reach especially advanced ages. The music stimulates their mind, connects them with others and lowers stress. Importantly, performing is also a physical workout. Watch the virtuosi sweat.

Tony Bennett passed at 96, having sung only 23 months earlier (with Lady Gaga). Though the performances were billed as "One Last Time," Bennett seemed in fine form.

The early deaths were usually tied to addictions. Biedernecke was an alcoholic. Washington was cut down by abuse of prescription drugs. Parker, Coltrane and Holiday suffered multiple addictions.

How did Walter Theodore Rollins escape? Born in Harlem, Rollins took some wrong turns. At 21, he helped rob a tobacco store and did time in jail. And he got hooked on heroin. But at around age 24, Rollins put himself into the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and broke the habit.

Also called the Lexington Narcotic Farm, the facility was both a prison and hospital for addicts. Numerous musicians and artists passed through. Relapses were common, but Rollins was not among them.

From then on, Rollins committed himself to staying sober and healthy, spiritually and physically. He got into yoga and meditation, which he practiced religiously. Many a recovering alcoholic know their power.

It is a falsehood, as Rollins demonstrated, that getting high feeds creativity. A year after leaving "Lexington," as musicians called the hospital, Rollins recorded his seminal album, "Saxophone Colossus." From there he built his legacy as an improvisational genius.

Rollins was not alone among other jazz greats who lived well into their 90s. They include Eubie Blake (96), Marian McPartland and Benny Carter (95), Lionel Hampton and Bucky Pizzarelli (94).

The list of rock musicians perishing in their 20s and 30s from drug abuse is voluminous: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse all died at 27. Sid Vicious didn't make it past 21. But Mick Jagger still performs at 82.

Let's not overstate the extent to which mind-altering substances spur creativity by relaxing the brain and freeing up associations. Researchers find that novel thoughts do not necessarily lead to good art.

I recall attending a memorial service for Horace Silver, the master of hard bop, who had died at the respectably ripe age of 85. The son of a Cape Verdean immigrant, Silver started life with scoliosis among other physical burdens. But he used those challenges to pursue a life dedicated to family, spirit and healthy eating. He had cut down touring to spend more time with his wife and son. It's all there in his autobiography, "Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty."

When the service ended, young jazz musicians filled the church with Silver's gospel-flavored, Brazilian-inspired sounds. (Steely Dan borrowed heavily from Silver for their opening of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number.")

Like Rollins, Silver lacked nothing in creativity and didn't regard self-destruction as the price for producing original sounds. Starting in 1959, Rollins "disappeared" for a while to work on his art. He would practice for hours on New York's Williamsburg Bridge.

He emerged three years later with an album called "The Bridge." And as a bonus, he had 64 years left to make more music. Rollins knew that great artists didn't have to die young.

Why Are Population Alarmists So Troubled By Our Stabilizing Birth Rate?

Why Are Population Alarmists So Troubled By Our Stabilizing Birth Rate?

Back in 1969, President Richard Nixon warned Congress against the rapid growth of the American population: "When future generations evaluate the record of our time, one of the most important factors in their judgment will be the way in which we responded to population growth."

If the American headcount continued rising at the current rate, Nixon said, the nation's "social supplies — the capacity to educate youth, to provide privacy and living space, to maintain the processes of open, democratic government — may be grievously strained."

Since 1969, America's population has boomed by about 202 million to today's 343 million, a 69 percent jump. But today's most prominent discussions on population trends rarely focus on the loss of "social supplies." Quite the contrary. Even though the country is still adding people at about replacement level, population alarmists are painting falling birthrates as an economic disaster in the making.

As economist Nicholas Eberstadt, a leading advocate for higher birthrates, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, "For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the planetary population will decline."

There is precious little to be said in defense of a plague that wiped out one-third of Europe's population. But it did sharply raise workers' wages as landowners had to compete for muscle in a much-reduced workforce.

As for today's concerns, a drop in the numbers could ease the housing crunch for obvious supply-demand reasons. And as artificial intelligence takes over thinking jobs and autonomous vehicles end the need for taxi and truck drivers, our economy may demand fewer far workers.

Let's be clear about one thing: Children are a joy. May Americans continue to build families. We certainly don't want a population collapse as seen in Russia. At the same time, we don't have to measure a nation's well-being by how crowded it can get.

Furthermore, a stable or modestly falling population could take pressure off our natural world. "Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet," said nature filmmaker David Attenborough, "is either mad or an economist."

When Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, he explained that federal programs were needed to guard "the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food."

Leading environmental groups back then made "zero population growth" their rallying cry with a focus on birthrates. The massive baby boom generation was in its childbearing years, so the specter of its launching another baby boom seemed plausible. By 1970, however, birthrates were already falling. They had dropped to about 18 per 1,000 people, down from about 24 births per 1,000 people in 1950.

Much of the population growth in the '70s was driven by immigration. But environmental groups, the Sierra Club, for example, steered clear of advocating reduced immigration for fear that could be read as hostile to Latinos.

It seems a bit hysterical to use the term "population crash" or even the loaded word "depopulation" regarding today's birthrates. A major factor in our growing population was Americans having longer, healthier lives. That's a positive development, right?

In any event, things change. Americans might decide to have more children. IVF treatments — fertilizing eggs outside the womb — are now routine. And the prospect of growing babies in the lab from start to finish now seems a matter of time. There already exists artificial wombs for very premature babies.

Meanwhile, I don't recall thinking, as my car crawled in traffic through Rocky Mountain National Park, "Gosh, I wish there were more people on this road."

Was America a sad place in 1958, when it had half as many inhabitants as now? Historians refer to its decade as the "Fabulous Fifties." Think about it.

Case Closed! The FDA Has Determined That Mifepristone Is Safe And Effective

Case Closed! The FDA Has Determined That Mifepristone Is Safe And Effective

The Supreme Court has just restored a woman's ability to obtain the abortion pill by mail without first seeing a medical provider, at least for now. A lower court had tried to tighten that easy access by requiring patients to consult with a licensed clinician in person before acquiring the drug, mifepristone.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute is an anti-abortion organization that purports to provide scientific research for the "pro-life" movement. Among the risks of loosening restrictions on being given the abortion pill, it writes, is that it enables fathers who don't want a child to trick a woman into ending a pregnancy she intends to continue.

The dark scenario goes that a father (or others) could obtain abortion pills through the mail and slip them into a pregnant patient's food or drink. This has happened.

There was a case in Texas in which a man gave his pregnant girlfriend mifepristone-laced cookies to induce an abortion. He was charged with capital murder. Not surprisingly, there have been similar incidents.

But all kinds of drugs can be misused. Over-the-counter medications can lead to coma or death, especially when mixed with alcohol. They include painkillers, flu medications and antihistamines. No one is demanding that people see a doctor before taking aspirin.

Meanwhile, several prescribed drugs have been used to illegally end a pregnancy. In a recent Iowa case, a woman allegedly slipped oxycodone into the lasagna she had prepared and delivered to an expectant mother to cause a miscarriage. Though oxycodone is often addictive, the courts have not banned the opioid, which is used to control severe pain.

Prescription drugs have a long history of being used to commit other crimes. In a 2011 Albuquerque case, a waiter allegedly spiked a glass of wine with Valium and served it to a woman he was interested in. The woman blacked out. The waiter had been asking the woman for her address and phone number, according to the target's friends. The waiter was charged with distributing a controlled substance and aggravated battery. A New Mexico state court dismissed the charges because prosecutors took too long to bring the defendant to trial.

The Justice Department has long classified ketamine as a "club drug." It is prized for creating a dreamlike feeling of being detached from one's body and surroundings. It also serves as a "knockout drug" that leaves users vulnerable to such crimes as robbery or rape.

In 2021, a Utah man was accused of allegedly serving hot chocolate spiked with ketamine to a woman and her young teenage daughter. He was subsequently charged with three felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

The Lozier Institute seeks to put a roadblock in the ability to end a pregnancy. It is within its rights to make its case, but it is obvious that reducing access to abortions, not advancing women's health, is the motive here.

The Food and Drug Administration and leading medical societies have determined that serious complications caused by mifepristone are rare. Meanwhile, an analysis published by the JAMA Network found that the risk of death from giving birth, though low, is still many times higher than that from a legal abortion.

Medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. And it is almost always used very early in the pregnancy, in the first 12 weeks.

The Lozier Institute holds that requiring in-person pill dispensing and follow-up visits to a medical practitioner is "necessary to protect women's health and freedom." There may be benefits to seeing a doctor, but it's unclear how making it harder to obtain mifepristone would protect a woman's "freedom."

Quite the opposite, it would seem.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson's Somebody Days Are Nearing The End (Or Should Be)

Tucker Carlson's problem, it would seem, is that what he says doesn't matter, because he has a long history of not saying what he thinks. True, he once starred at Fox News, and even now his followers on social media number in the millions. But he's shifted into crackpot conspiracies and turning on Donald Trump. Anything for an audience.

Carlson long hated Trump in his heart while praise poured from his mouth. The war in Iran polls poorly as does Trump, and so Carlson uses the opportunity to inflate his diminished importance by blaming himself for making Trump possible.

"We're implicated in this, for sure," he said. "You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people."

On trying to mislead people, Carlson is expert.

In 1999, he wrote that Trump was "the single most repulsive person on the planet." But when Trump was elected president in 2016, Carlson wrote a Politico piece headlined "Donald Trump is Shocking, Vulgar and Right." In it he gave Trump the lightest of spankings. Trump was "imperfect."

After 2020, Carlson expressed contempt for Trump but only privately. He had a job to keep as political pundit on pro-Trump Fox News. There he was paid more than $15 million a year to air fake opinions.

When Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, Carlson sent private messages doubting the Trump camp's claims of election fraud. "I hate him passionately," he also texted.

On air, though, Carlson tiptoed around Trump's phony assertion that Dominion Voting Systems software helped steal millions of votes. Instead, he vaguely stated that "something was wrong with the election."

After Fox dropped Carlson as a legal liability as well as pain in the butt, he rebranded himself on social media. He was now a persecuted truth-teller focused on corporate power, demographic changes and other sprawling issues.

But when Trump ran for reelection in 2024, Carlson jumped right back in line and heartily supported him in public. After the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Carlson said the shooting "changed everything." That's when Trump "became the leader of this nation," he said.

Thus, a "commentator" who wrote in an email that Trump's first term was "a disaster with no upside" started campaigning for him. As a warm-up act at a Trump rally, Carlson did his icky "Dad comes home" routine.

In Carlson's recent telling, Trump has been manipulated by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu into entering the war in Iran. If true, where was the strong patriarch Carlson had been heralding for a decade?

It is Netanyahu's job to look after Israel's interests. It is the American president's job to look after America's interests. Often those interests align, but sometimes they don't.

Netanyahu had urged other presidents to strike Iran, but the other presidents declined. There may be an argument for stopping the exporter of terrorism from developing nuclear weapons. Too bad Trump's big mouth couldn't stop itself from hurting the cause with bloodthirsty threats against Iran's civilization.

I share Carlson's displeasure at Trump's many character flaws, but I didn't cover them up when Trump was more popular. Nor did I buy into the president's vows to save Obamacare or "drain the swamp" of Washington corruption. Only suckers would believe a man who stiffed his workers, oversaw six bankruptcies and transparently lied about Barack Obama not being American born.

Carlson wasn't a sucker. He knew, like Trump, how to play the chumps by selling himself as an honest man speaking his mind. Nonetheless, The New York Times just ran a long interview credulously titled "What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe?"

Unbelievable.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump's 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Trump's 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Some years ago, I was president of an organization called the Association of Opinion Journalists. Every year we would run a convention in a different city and end it with a celebration in the hotel's ballroom space. Our speaker on that closing night was usually some well-known political opinionator.

Members often talked about inviting the president to give that address, as had happened before. In 1947, Harry Truman spoke to the group (formerly called the National Conference of Editorial Writers), as did Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Other prominent government officials included Vice President Richard Nixon, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

In later years, however, members argued against having the president as speaker because it would subject the attendees to oppressive security checks. After slogging through days of seminars, they wanted to cut loose. The party was for us.

Now consider the recent White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, cut short by an apparent assassination attempt. The target appeared to be the evening's speaker, President Donald Trump, who used the fiasco to hawk his controversial $400 million White House ballroom as a more secure alternative to the Washington Hilton.

A federal judge has frozen the construction for lacking clear legal authority and congressional approval. Congress now has an opportunity to ditch the grandiose plan, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions.

Yes, Trump said it would be paid for by donations, not the taxpayers. The known donor list is heavy with big Wall Street, tech and law firm names. All have business before the federal government. Trump repaying their "kindness" could end up costing taxpayers a great deal. More troubling, some donor identities have been kept secret.

Of course, any events at a palatial White House ballroom would require extra security, and who would pay for that? The taxpayers, of course.

Enter Sen. Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican is pushing a bill to tack another $400 million to the national debt to finish what donors were to pay for — and build a security infrastructure, a Secret Service annex, underneath the ballroom.

As Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, a co-sponsor, explained unconvincingly, "This is about our nation having a place to gather."

The White House already has a State Dining Room that seats about 140 guests, and if more room is needed, the East Room can accommodate as many as 300. Why must the president's residence include a ballroom able to hold, according to Trump, nearly 1,000?

The biggest indoor banquet space at the French royal palace of Versailles — the Gallery of Battles — can serve "only" 650 diners max. That happens to be a lot of people.

Meanwhile, why must taxpayers be billed to provide a catering hall big enough for the White House correspondents' annual bash? They are an independent organization, just like the Association of Opinion Journalists was. We paid for our convention space, the big dinner and, yes, security, through dues, contributions, and participation fees. Had the taxpayers funded us, I'm sure several members would have written editorials or columns and nowadays produce TikToks condemning the use of public money for a private group.

A word about the correspondents' dinner itself. Over the years, it's morphed into a red-carpet event crafted to glamorize what should be working journalists who cover the president. Now there's a ton of "pregame" coverage of who is going, who is not, who got invited to the Vanity Fair magazine party. And don't leave out the Hollywood celebrities.

In his 1678 Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan introduced Vanity Fair as an unseemly marketplace for pleasure, status and worldly ambition. "The name of that Town," Bunyan wrote, "is Vanity."

Sounds a lot like Washington, D.C.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales were both accused of sexual misconduct involving staffers. Californian Swalwell said he'd resign from his House seat after giving up on his run for governor. Texan Gonzales said he was withdrawing from the 2026 reelection race.

Back in the day, male politicians cavorted with their female staffers and got away with it. But that was way back and many days ago.

An official cheating on his wife with a woman picked up at a rally doesn't seem to bother voters the way it once did. Donald Trump has numbed the electorate to that level of moral outrage. I don't approve of adultery, but it's generally not a deal killer in my voting for someone. Many men regarded as great national leaders had sexual relationships outside their marriages. Some were Founding Fathers.

An affair with a staffer who may fear losing a job or a chance at promotion if they refuse is another matter. Although I've generally referred to the offenders as men, women can engage in similar misconduct, and some have. They famously include former California Rep. Katie Hill. She was involved in at least one improper relationship, with a congressional staffer. Hill resigned in 2019 under considerable pressure.

The undeniable shift in the rules of conduct makes it incomprehensible that an ambitious congressman would ignore them. That goes doubly so for Swalwell, a Democratic star who briefly ran for president in 2019. Until recently a serious contender to become governor of California, he's now out of the race.

He's been charged with grave offenses that include drugging and raping a woman in a hotel in 2018. I'm reluctant to accept as fact any accusation thrown at a powerful male figure. The #MeToo business may have emerged out of reasonable outrage, but it has often spiraled into a racket peddling half-truths — pushed by women with other agendas or a few screws loose.

Swalwell says the stories about him are "false." He denies the rape charge and insists that the allegations were politically motivated. He might have a point or two. Given the heated gubernatorial race in California, the timing may be questioned. Swalwell's lawyer has publicly threatened legal action against at least one accuser.

But his admission of having made "mistakes" alongside the copy-and-paste announcement, "My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children" leads one to believe he was sexually involved with an underling. That alone is serious.

Power radiating over good looks and smart TV appearances made Swalwell a glamorous figure. He had fans in Hollywood. One can easily believe an unnamed accuser's description of his aura. "When he talked to you, it was like the sun was shining on you," she said. "You felt like the coolest person in the room."

As for Gonzales, the staffer with whom he admitted having an affair later took her life. The congressman insists that the suicide was not tied to their relationship.

Gonzales strayed from his marriage vows while representing a culturally conservative district along the South Texas border. Swalwell's constituents in the East Bay, right across the water from San Francisco, are affluent and socially liberal.

The two couldn't be culturally more different, but both seemed to think they were entitled to disregard the mores of the day. Being sexually involved with an employee is barred by House rules. And for good reasons.

Again, if they were caught having a fling with a woman outside their professional orbit, they might be criticized but could wrangle their way out of it. Their fatal flaw was treating their female workforce as a harem. What could they have been possibly thinking?

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.