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Libertarian: NY’s Eminent-Domain Abuse
Many states, but not New York, tightened their rules on eminent domain after the Supreme Court in 2005’s Kelo v. New London “justified the government stealing property from its owners to pass it to better-connected private parties,” argues Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. “So, it’s no surprise” that the court may overturn Kelo by taking up Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency, which “comes from the Empire State.” The OCIDA seized Bowers’ property to hand it to a competitor to use for parking, “a raw case of crony capitalism that violated private property rights and free market principles.” The Kelo decision “alerted the public that takings of private property are often corrupt, performed by politicians to reward friends and allies”; now the high court may “reconsider the mistake it made.”
Liberal: Bye-Bye, Blue Wall
“Since Covid, the biggest blue states have dramatically lagged behind the biggest Republican states in population growth,” observes The Liberal Patriot’s Nate Moore. From 2020 to ’24, “California, New York, and Illinois each lost more than 100,000 thousand residents,” while Florida and Texas “gained around 2 million.” Post-pandemic, “Florida and Texas gained more than 1 million residents combined” while their blue counterparts “barely broke 400,000 cumulatively.” Unless those states “right the ship” with sufficient policy reforms, there will be “frightening electoral costs” and a “very dicey” 2030s presidential map. “The mighty Blue Wall — long an electoral refuge for Democratic campaigns — would not cut it anymore.” Democrats’ only option is to “prioritize restoring blue states as attractive and accessible places to live.”
Conservative: Dems Dither on Campus Jew-Hate
“The Democrats still don’t have a coherent strategy” to address campus antisemitism, “as evidenced by their reaction to the arrest this month of the political activist Mahmoud Khalil,” notes The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley. Even Sen. Chuck Schumer, “wary of upsetting his flank and depressing turnout in a presidential election year,” opted for “mixed messages about the protests,” with one of his staffers reportedly telling “Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who later resigned, that ‘the best strategy is to keep heads down.’ ’’ “Some prominent university presidents have been forced out, but the atmosphere on campus when students returned to school in the fall remained hostile to Jews and supporters of Israel.” “The relative blindness of progressives to antisemitism . . . undermines their moral credibility.”
From the left: Michelle’s Elitist Advice
“The real problem with” former First Lady Michelle Obama’s new advice podcast, IMO, “is that Michelle thinks her success would make her a reasonable person from whom to seek advice,” but the show is “by and for the rich — specifically, rich women,” scoffs Batya Ungar-Sargon at UnHerd. Michelle and her brother, Craig Robinson, “invite other fabulously wealthy people” to offer up advice, but “their ‘experts’ are mainly celebrities.” The middle-class values and pre-globalization social structures that made Michelle’s success possible “are utterly uninteresting to her,” so her “completely unrelatable” and “opulent lifestyle” is what “takes centre stage” on her podcast. “At a time when the Democrats have a serious problem with two main groups — men and the working class — this podcast is a symptom of why that is.”
Democrat: We Need To Listen, Not Podcast
Although “skidding along its lowest favorability levels in history,” grumbles Max Burns at The Hill, top Democratic Party leaders respond by backing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast. Instead, they’d do better to “focus on talking to actual Democratic voters.” Internal polling shows they want the party “giving it back to Republicans as good as they give it to Democrats.” Before engaging with the podcasting world, the party must “decide what it believes and what it actually has to say to the listening public.” And until it decides “its post-Biden message,” Democrats should spend “less time listening to Steve Bannon and more time listening to the voters who are deserting them.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board