Table of Contents
From the right: Trump’s Tariff Win
President Trump “has imposed a tariff regime that would have horrified much of the political and financial establishment just a few months ago, and now, they are happy that he did not do more,” marvels the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. “Of course, Trump opponents will say he bungled every step of the way and nearly blew up the world economy in the process,” but “it does not matter if this was bungling or 4D chess” because Trump “says 75 countries now want to negotiate new trade agreements with the United States.” “For better or for worse,” Trump “set off a firestorm, and then made people happy even as he kept many of the tariffs he wanted.” He “showed remarkable flexibility and an ability to extricate himself from a mess of his own creation.”
Legal take: A Big Deregulation Gamble
In February, President Trump “ordered departments to review every regulation” that might be “unconstitutional, conflict with Supreme Court rulings” or impose costs exceeding the benefits, notes The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel. Wednesday, he “went all-in” and “ordered the next step: nuke the offending regs immediately.” He’s banking on a “ ‘good cause’ exception” to bypass requirements like getting public comments, “riding recent Supreme Court doctrines to their fullest and most robust conclusions, then challenging the court to explain” why he shouldn’t. Expect “a flood of litigation” with “demands” that the court “define the contours” of previous decisions. Trump’s “asking for everything” here, at some risk: He could wind up getting “very little.”
Social critic: The Neglected-Kid Nightmare
“Official statistics are missing a great deal” of neglect and abuse tragedies, warns Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Free Press. Thanks to “ample protections for parents,” it’s increasingly difficult “to remove a child from a home because of potentially dangerous conditions.” That leads to horrors like Gavin Peterson, “the 12-year-old Utah boy who died last July 9 after being tortured and starved.” Now “libertarians and religious conservatives who believe parents should be freer from government interference have formed an unlikely alliance with progressives who believe the child welfare system is structurally racist.” No: These kids aren’t suffering “from overzealous government meddling,” they’re “being failed by the system every day — and without intervention from the authorities, they will suffer and die without anyone hearing their cries for help.”
Libertarian: Defund the Pronoun Police
As the Trump administration says it won’t “respond to emails from reporters who bother to stipulate their preferred pronouns,” Reason’s Robby Soave finds it “weird and off-putting to get really worked up about pronoun policing.” Also odd: that viral moment from CNN’s town hall where Anderson Cooper gets “corrected” by an audience member for assuming “the woman (?) goes by she” as the questioner “demands a they pronoun.” And the question that followed defined the left’s problem: “How can the Democrats win back various demographic groups — men, minorities, etc. — who are fleeing the party in record numbers?” It’s just this “hectoring” by the pronoun police “that has so thoroughly repelled voters, particularly young males.” Democrats need to be “normal” yet “telling someone you want to be called they/them just strikes a lot of people as abnormal.”
Conservative: Gavin Newsom, ‘High Noon’ Hero?
Democrats desperately need someone to stand up to “the far-left fringe,” a la Marshal Will Kane in “High Noon,” argues Douglas MacKinnon at The Hill. “A significant number of what used to be their base — including many non-white voters — have been turned off by identity politics at a record pace,” yet “the regular town-folk of Democratville are petrified to call out” the “bullies.” Big problem: “The ouster through primary elections of the established, older, supposedly ‘out-of-touch’ Democrats has become a proven and successful strategy for the ‘outlaw’ far-left wing of the party.” Gov. Gavin Newsom plainly wants to “ride to the rescue” but may be too “unauthentic.” Yet if no hero steps up, they’ll “indeed become the permanent minority.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
