◼ President Trump is heading to Israel on Sunday to celebrate the peace agreement that his administration orchestrated. It promises to end the war in Gaza and bring all the hostages home after two years in captivity. While there is reason for trepidation about whether there are sufficient guardrails to keep Hamas from rearming and threatening Israel in the future, the agreement is a cause for joy for the families of hostages and the IDF reservists who have been spending time away from their families. Israel also has many accomplishments to celebrate. Hamas has been severely degraded; Hezbollah has been decapitated; and Iran, the benefactor of both terrorist proxies, has been humiliated, with its nuclear program having been dealt a significant setback. There is hope now that an end to the war is in sight.

◼ Trump railed that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be imprisoned for failing to police the city and assist federal immigration enforcement. Simultaneously, the Ninth Circuit heard arguments Thursday on the administration’s appeal of an order by Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, enjoining Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Portland, Ore. Illinois officials are similarly challenging the deployment in their state. Judge Immergut may be correct that Trump is at least mostly wrong in relying on Section 12406 of military law, which authorizes domestic troop deployments only if violent unrest is preventing ordinary civilian personnel from enforcing federal law. But the jurisprudence construing such statutes admonishes politically unaccountable judges to pay great deference to the commander in chief’s judgments about security needs. There is a weighty question regarding the point (if any) at which judges may intervene if the president’s claims are “untethered to the facts,” as Immergut puts it. But even if Trump is wrong on Section 12406, he has two aces in the hole: his authority to protect federal functions under Article II of the Constitution (i.e., no statute required); and the Insurrection Act, to which he hasn’t yet resorted—though it arguably gives him even broader discretion to send in the troops.

◼ Trump has sought to make an example of Chicago, sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement on an aggressive citywide operation. So far, he has at least succeeded in making a spectacle of it. Governor Pritzker responded in kind on social media. “I will not back down,” he fumed. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?” Mayor Johnson went even lower: “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested.” As a political matter, Trump is still winning this conflict. While media outlets can find people to say that the presence of National Guardsmen is intimidating, cities in which they’ve appeared have become notably safer, especially at night. In Washington, D.C., violent crime dropped almost 20 percent in the first month and property crime saw a similar decline. Chicago residents would undoubtedly appreciate the same. Meanwhile, the rhetoric of Pritzker and Johnson is irresponsible at a time when left-wing thugs are attacking ICE officers doing their duty in enforcing federal law.

◼ There are certain unwritten rules in American life, and one of them is that before your face is featured on the nation’s currency you are first obliged to die. There is no constitutional provision that mandates this, nor any law written tightly enough to guarantee it. But, as a general matter, we have shied away from putting living figures on our notes and coins, on the grounds that it is monarchical behavior and that the United States is not a monarchy. Unsurprisingly, this salutary tradition is not of great interest to the Trump administration, which intends to put an image of Trump on both sides of a commemorative $1 coin that will be produced for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On one side, Trump will appear in profile. On the other, he will appear pumping his fist, with the words “Fight Fight Fight” lining the coin’s perimeter. Answering questions about the plan, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that she was unsure if Trump had seen it, but that she was “sure he’ll love it.” He will. But that’s not really the important point, is it?

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◼ Bari Weiss was recently named editor in chief of CBS News, and the liberal hysteria that’s followed her since her New York Times days has flared up once again. Weiss, who resigned from the Times in 2020, citing a hostile workplace environment, went on to launch her own journalistic venture. What began as a Substack newsletter eventually grew into the highly successful Free Press. A somewhat disillusioned liberal herself, Weiss has long attracted controversy for her heterodox views. She drew some of her harshest criticism for her cautious defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings. Weiss, a staunch defender of Israel and a vocal critic of “wokeness,” has told the CBS staff that, under her leadership, the outlet will pursue journalism that is “fair, fearless, and factual.” This is perhaps a positive prescription for CBS, given that the outlet has struggled with transparency in the past—most recently via its deceptive edit of an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. With public trust in the media at historic lows, Weiss’s appointment could represent an opportunity to reform corporate journalism from within. Adding to her recent successes, Paramount Skydance has also purchased the Free Press for $150 million. It’s a good day to be Bari Weiss, and a bad one to be woke.

◼ On Sunday, October 5, Cardinal Robert McElroy said the annual Red Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington to pray for the judiciary and the legal system at the start of the Supreme Court’s term. Unlike in years past, because of security concerns, none of the justices attended. That seems prudent after a 41-year-old New Jersey man, who had previously been barred from the cathedral, was arrested with some 200 homemade explosives and a reported record of “hostility and disdain for the Supreme Court, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Catholic Church and Jewish people.” Meanwhile, the Justice Department is asking for a 30-year sentence for the armed assassin who was arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh’s house in 2022 and had carefully plotted to kill as many as four justices after the Dobbs leak in order to preserve Roe v. Wade. But District Judge Deborah Boardman, noting as a mitigating factor that the defendant’s family had come to accept him as a transgender woman, sentenced him to only eight years. The lenient sentence should be overturned on appeal, and Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz are calling for Boardman’s impeachment. Given the grave threat posed by assassination attempts to judicial independence, it’s a debate worth having.

◼ Political chaos in France usually takes the form of a riot or revolution. But the country’s latest round of turmoil has been defined more by gridlock than guillotines. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu resigned after only 26 days on the job. He had formed a cabinet less than 24 hours prior. Lecornu is the third prime minister to resign in the past year. His departure comes as the latest in a line of humiliating blows to the beleaguered President Emmanuel Macron. In July 2024, Macron called for snap parliamentary elections to reestablish a majority for his centrist Renaissance party. The gambit failed, resulting in a hung parliament deadlocked between factions across the political spectrum that have little interest in cooperation. Lecornu’s efforts to build an alliance in Macron’s favor quickly proved unsuccessful. He claimed that none of the rival parties were willing to compromise. Now he is serving in a caretaker capacity as Macron works to appoint yet another new prime minister. But as France faces a soaring deficit and one of the highest debt burdens in Europe, others would prefer that Macron either step down or call new parliamentary elections so that a consensus can be reached and a new budget can be passed. “The farce has lasted long enough,” National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen told the media after Lecornu’s resignation. If Macron’s sinking approval rating is any indication, the French people might agree.

◼ In any institution that survives its birth trauma, the founders—and outside observers—will wonder after a time, where is the next crop coming from? Who will carry on? John Coyne belonged to NR’s next crop, coming aboard in the Sixties as conservatism began to enjoy success in politics. He left us to work for Spiro Agnew, then for Agnew’s boss, Richard Nixon. But we most prized him for the work he did here: the graceful reporting, the excellent unsigned editorial paragraphs, the ever-present wit. One essay found him interviewing a Mr. John Coyne—an aged Irishman guarding the door of McSorley’s Ale House in New York City against feminists who wished to violate the sanctum. John delighted in the coincidence. In later years, he gave his talents to titans of industry who needed someone who knew the language as well as they knew the market. Dead at 90, R.I.P.