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Conservative: Antisemitism Festers in Blue States
After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, “it seemed like antisemitism was festering all over the country. But a closer look showed that . . . it was very specifically happening in places primarily run by Democrats,” notes Karol Markowicz at Fox News. Per Anti-Defamation League data, four of the five states with the most antisemitic incidents were blue ones. “Jew-hatred, and the chaos that accompanies it onto our streets is put down as quickly as it surfaces in places like Florida,” while New York and California impose few consequences. “School campuses in red states were relatively quiet,” and “the protests that did spring up on red state campuses were quickly brought under control.” “Jew-hatred can happen anywhere, the acceptance of it does not.”
Eye on Chicago: Board of Ed in Revolt
“All seven members of the Chicago Board of Education resigned” Friday over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s financial irresponsibility, reports The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Chicago is “negotiating what is likely to be a costly new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union,” and since the city “can’t afford the hefty raises and benefits CTU is demanding, the mayor has suggested that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) take out a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan” to cover it. But district CEO Pedro Martinez “rejected this as irresponsible and unsustainable,” arguing against “exorbitant, short-term borrowing.” Johnson wants to “appoint a new slate of school board members” to approve the loan — a “power play that has even outraged the progressive Chicago City Council.”
Libertarian: Union Keeps Ports Outdated
Whether “open or closed, many American ports rank among the least efficient in the entire world,” observes Reason’s Eric Boehm. “Fixing that ought to be one of the top priorities as negotiations between the ports and the [International Longshoremen’s Association] resume.” But the dispute “seems to be driven mainly by the union’s desire to block automation at the ports where its members work.” Sorry: “American ports need more automation just to catch up with what’s considered normal in the rest of the world.” And “the tradeoff between automation and jobs is not a zero-sum game.” “Some job losses are inevitable, but efficiency gains benefit dockworkers too.” The eventual deal must avoid “concessions that will cause America’s ports to fall farther behind the rest of the world.”
UK watch: Green Devolution Nothing To Cheer
“The end of coal is being celebrated by the political class as a sign of Britain’s ‘leadership’ on the climate,” grumbles Spiked’s Fraser Myers as the closure of a “plant in Nottinghamshire brings to an end Britain’s 142-year reliance on the black stuff for generating electricity.” Hmm: “Thanks to the move away from reliable and cheap fossil fuels to unreliable and expensive renewable energy, the UK currently has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world.” Yet UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy “considers the continued use of fossil fuels to be a more ‘pervasive’ and ‘fundamental’ threat than terrorism.” Presenting “prosperity as wicked and penury as progress,” the UK’s green deindustrialization program will cause the “British people to pay a heavy price.”
Space beat: Vengeful White House Delays
Elon Musk boasts he’ll land five uncrewed Starship rockets on Mars in 2026 and possibly send a crewed expedition there by 2028, but “SpaceX has run into a government bureaucracy problem that has slowed its super rocket’s development to a crawl,” warns Mark R. Whittington at The Hill. The FAA “has delayed the fifth flight of SpaceX’s super rocket” to at least November, possibly because the White House is “irked” that Musk’s social-media platform, X, is a “free-speech zone.” Yet every delay “makes more likely the nightmarish possibility” China will beat America back to the moon. “The irresponsibility is breathtaking.” “Red Moon Rising” author Greg Autry and Brett Mecum’s solution? “Elect Trump to a second term” so “Musk has an ally rather than an enemy in the White House.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board