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Foreign desk: What’s Don’s Iran Play?
No group’s fortunes have seen “a more dramatic turn” than those of “Iran and its Axis of Resistance,” reports Jay Solomon at The Free Press. “In early 2024, the Islamic Republic seemed on the cusp of becoming a nuclear-armed state—and its proxies appeared to have a chokehold on the Middle East.” Now, not so much. So “the question is what the White House will actually do come late January.” “The president-elect has surrounded himself with Iran hawks and has threatened to bomb Iran into ‘smithereens.’ ” “But he has also vowed to end U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern wars.” Now that “Israel’s direct military operations against Iran” exposed weaknesses “not previously understood,” will Trump’s “hawks” or “those who lean more isolationist” have “the most sway”?
Pollster: Post-Biden Democrats Need a Reset
“Let’s face it, the Democratic Party got off track,” muses Mark Penn at Fox News. In the ’90s, Democratic President Bill Clinton pushed “adoption of policies like Pell Grants that required a B average or work requirements for welfare or a balanced budget.” Under President Biden, “the border was thrown open,” Dems “passed huge spending bills using COVID-19 as cover to dump trillions of dollars into climate change policies” and the Justice Department “became an enforcer of left-wing policies.” And Biden’s absurd decision to commute “the sentences of 37 murderers who committed the most heinous of crimes” was another confirmation that “the Democratic Party needs a reset.”
From the left: Culture Stands Kill Dem Brand
“Espousing fair trade, a stronger safety net, and taxes on the rich will not solve the Democrats’ problem with middle America and with many working-class voters,” warns John B. Judis at the Liberal Patriot, when the party’s brand is about defunding the police, “permitting men who identify as women to compete in women’s sports,” “decriminalizing border crossings” and “draconian measures on climate change.” Fact is, “concerns over Democratic stands on crime, immigration, and gender were even more important than concerns over the economy” in driving swing voters to Trump. Dems must “aggressively change” their national brand, but it’ll be “difficult.” The Democratic National Committee is a “weak” organization needing a new chair who “can act decisively to turn the party around.”
Libertarian: Joe’s Self-Damning Steel Stunt
“The decision to block U.S. Steel’s acquisition by Nippon Steel is the perfect coda to President Joe Biden’s political career,” marvels Reason’s Eric Boehm. He pretends “there is ‘credible evidence’ that the deal ‘threatens to impair the national security of the United States,’ ” yet “laughably fails to detail any of that supposedly credible evidence” — “because it’s ridiculous to suggest that Nippon Steel, a publicly traded company based in a close American ally (Japan) that already operates several steelmaking facilities in the United States, is any sort of threat.” Indeed, “Nippon’s agreement to buy U.S. Steel came with a promise to invest more than $1 billion in refurbishing and modernizing the company’s existing plants.” This “is a cynical, shallow decision that benefits a political ally — the bosses of the United Steelworkers union, which opposed the deal even though many rank-and-file members supported it.”
From the right: The Key Deportation Tool
President-elect Trump’s “commitment to mass deportations may be ironclad, but pulling it off will require using a powerful weapon his predecessors ignored: E-Verify,” argues Hayden Ludwig at RealClearPolitics. “Employers can use” the federal service “to confirm employees’ eligibility to work in the United States.” “Some 75% of the illegal migrant population in the U.S. is in the labor force. Without jobs, most of them will leave,” and “encouraging them to self-deport is the cleanest, most efficient way to remove them from the country. But that only works when the program is universal and mandatory, as it is in just 10 states.” Bottom line: “There’s no reason President Trump and the incoming Republican Congress shouldn’t require every employer in all 50 states to enforce its use.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board