◼ President Donald Trump is never one to settle for mere overstatement when he can reach for outlandish exaggeration instead. This quality was on full display in his most recent address from the White House, in which he sometimes sounded like an excitable caller on C-SPAN’s Republican line. Trump argued that the nation was on the verge of a collapse during the Biden administration and now, under his stewardship, is experiencing successes like “no one has ever seen.” Clearly, though, the occasion for the address was the public discontent over the economy, which has dragged down the president’s poll numbers and threatens to sweep in a Democratic congressional majority next year. The basic problem for Trump is threefold. First, the price increases under Biden mean that goods are still more expensive than they used to be, even if the inflation rate is lower than the Biden-era peak. It is true that rising wages—and tax cuts—can put more money in people’s wallets and counteract the effect of the higher prices, but this will take time. Second, the Trump tariffs are making goods more expensive while their chaotic rollout has created great uncertainty for businesses. Third, Trump has refused to acknowledge that prices are still going up. If nothing else, Trump’s speech shows that the White House realizes the political challenge it faces on the economy. Ultimately, it is economic conditions that will determine how the issue plays out, regardless of the president’s exceedingly harsh or boundlessly self-glorifying words.

◼ On the first night of Hanukkah, a father-and-son team of Islamist terrorists armed with rifles and IEDs attacked an outdoor celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. Fifteen Jews were killed, including two rabbis, a ten-year-old girl, and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Dozens more remain injured. Police killed one killer; the other is in custody. We wish we could say this horrific event was shocking, but unfortunately, it is not. Just this month, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry warned about the rising tide of antisemitism, with annual incidents now five times what they were prior to the October 7 massacres. The response by the Australian government has been to accommodate the anti-Israel mob while failing to protect Jewish communities. In August, the government allowed antisemitic protesters to shut down traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and then Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recognized a Palestinian state. The shooters were identified as Naveed Akram and his father, the Pakistani-born Sajid Akram, who came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa. One would think such an egregious tragedy would make Australia rethink its immigration policies, its response to antisemitism, or its strategy of accommodating the pro-Hamas mob. Instead, Albanese has announced that Australia, which has among the toughest gun laws in the world, is going to impose even tougher restrictions on legal gun ownership. Albanese expressed horror at the attack. What did he think the mob meant by “globalize the intifada”?

◼ The Department of Energy extended a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy, an electric utility, to restart the undamaged nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island. In 1979, the Pennsylvania facility was the site of the most infamous nuclear accident in U.S. history when one of its reactors partially melted down, releasing radioactive substances. Three Mile Island terrified the public. Regulators seized the opportunity to impose a blizzard of ever-shifting rules on nuclear energy, making the cost of plant construction virtually prohibitive. Yet these fears were never justified. The meltdown at Three Mile Island had no measurable health effects on either plant employees or surrounding residents. When properly operated, nuclear power stations remain remarkably safe. The Trump administration is right to switch Three Mile Island back on. Better still would be broad, industry-wide deregulation and permitting reform that could unleash the full potential of nuclear power.

◼ For most of Trump’s second term, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has avoided controversy. But that quiet service ended dramatically when Vanity Fair published a long profile of her. In it, Wiles sharply criticizes other members of the administration. She calls Vice President JD Vance a conspiracy theorist, labels Elon Musk an “odd duck,” and says that Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. After the article was published, Wiles responded by calling it “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” It is extremely difficult to believe that Wiles, a longtime aide to Trump, was fooled into granting eleven on-the-record interviews for an article that she thought would laud the administration. Similarly unbelievable is that Vanity Fair somehow also managed to trick Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and other senior officials to sit down for a photo shoot. One explanation is that Wiles is spectacularly naïve. Another is that she knew exactly what she was doing by putting out a narrative that she is the levelheaded manager who is trying to keep the administration on the right path while surrounded by loose cannons and incompetents.

peace of mind for parents

Nearly 95% of parents say Teen Accounts help them safeguard their teens online. And we’ll continue to add new protections, to give parents more peace of mind.

Learn more.

◼ The Manhattan Institute released a survey of about 3,000 Republican voters that extensively sampled the voters who make up Trump’s “multi-ethnic, working-class” coalition. A group the report classifies as “new entrants” brought with them an affection for conspiracy theories, including the notions that George W. Bush played some role in the 9/11 attacks and that the Holocaust did not happen “as historians describe.” They have also imported their affinity for progressive policies, including their openness to higher taxes, gender-transition surgeries, and DEI-related discrimination. Most of the new entrants were Democratic voters before 2016. A measurable number of them were Democratic voters before 2024. Parties should appeal to new voters but also try to bring them around to good sense—as Republicans have done with previous waves of newcomers. Yet the 60 percent of the party that is composed of stalwart Republican voters who are inclined toward conservative principles have too often been told that they should simply defer to these latest entrants. Nothing is expected of the newbies; everything is demanded of their hosts. The Republican Party is increasingly and rightly vocal about the need for assimilation in American society, but it evinces none of that civilizational self-confidence regarding its own identity.

◼ Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is bound to receive criticism for the ongoing measles outbreak in Spartanburg County, S.C. But Kennedy was only sworn in on February 13. The parents of most of the 138 South Carolinians who have the measles now had made their decisions about vaccination years ago. That said, Kennedy has spent years as a high-profile opponent of vaccines, even relying on studies that had already been exposed as fraudulent. In 2019, Kennedy appeared at rallies to oppose the requirement that students attending school in the State of Washington receive the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. That year, he filed a lawsuit arguing that the State of New York did not have a “compelling state interest” in ensuring that every student is vaccinated against measles. The good news is that, since he assumed his new position, Kennedy has become a fan of the measles vaccine. The bad news is that damage has already been done.

◼ Yet another Black Lives Matter executive has been indicted for allegedly treating donor funds as a personal expense account. Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson, executive director of Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City, was charged with 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. Dickerson, who took over the organization in 2016, has allegedly raised $5.6 million since 2020 for what donors believed was a national bail fund. According to the indictment, however, $3.15 million of that money was instead used to bail out her lifestyle. The indictment alleges that the funds were spent on grocery and food delivery services and personal trips to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, as well as a personal vehicle and real estate. This is a familiar pattern for Black Lives Matter–affiliated leaders. Patrisse Cullors, who led the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation from its founding in 2013 until 2021, drew scrutiny for directing millions to friends and family through job contracts and purchasing multiple million-dollar homes. She resigned in 2021 while denying wrongdoing. More recently, BLM activist Monica Cannon-Grant pled guilty to multiple counts of wire fraud after diverting $185,000 in donations to her nonprofit, Violence in Boston, and to pay for rent, shopping sprees, hotels, car rentals, auto repairs, meal deliveries, and a summer vacation trip to Maryland. It seems that financial mismanagement is a job requirement for BLM leaders.

peace of mind for parents

Nearly 95% of parents say Teen Accounts help them safeguard their teens online. And we’ll continue to add new protections, to give parents more peace of mind.

Learn more.

◼ Hong Kong’s drawn-out show trial of Jimmy Lai—which is, of course, really a Beijing production—has now resulted in a guilty verdict that the businessman and democracy advocate should wear as a badge of honor. Lai was charged with colluding with foreign powers under Hong Kong’s purposely vague National Security Law. Lai’s real crime was publishing Apple Daily, the city’s largest newspaper, which sought to hold Beijing to account for its promises to respect Hong Kong’s traditional freedoms. He has been kept in inhumane conditions, especially for a 78-year-old diabetic. His daughter reports that his health is failing. The U.S. has sought Lai’s freedom in talks with China. The U.K. has, in contrast, been shockingly indolent about the plight of a British citizen. There may now be, however, a new opportunity to press for his freedom. By persecuting Lai, Beijing has made its point about the price of dissidence in Hong Kong. Let it now deport Lai to live the rest of his days in peace in a free country.

◼ Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home. Their son Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. For Americans long raised on the greatness of his run of films in the Eighties, Reiner was more than just “Meathead” from All in the Family. He directed a remarkable number of classics, including the coming-of-age tales Stand by Me and The Sure Thing, the narratively sophisticated fantasy romp The Princess Bride, and the delightful rom-com When Harry Met Sally. For Donald Trump, however, Reiner remained always and forever one thing alone: a Trump critic. Trump reacted to the terrible news by announcing on Truth Social that Reiner’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” led to his death. The smallness of Trump’s soul is notable, if only because he grotesquely forced himself into a tragedy unrelated to him. As for the rest of us, we can celebrate Reiner’s legacy—a directorial career that began with the iconic This Is Spinal Tap—and some of its eternal wisdom: “There is a fine line between stupid and clever.”

◼ Born, as he described in Making It, in a Jewish slum in Brooklyn, Norman Podhoretz blazed through Columbia and Cambridge, then became editor of Commentary magazine at age 30. A friend of Norman Mailer and Paul Goodman, Podhoretz initially nudged the magazine in a countercultural direction. But then he swung right. How they hated him for it—they being the unpersuaded members of the New York family of intellectuals, almost all Jewish, all to one degree or another on the left. Podhoretz hoped to swing them with him, and he succeeded with many. But the larger remainder remained, and never ever forgave him. Podhoretz gave as good as he got. He was a fighter. And he fought zealously because the stakes were high. What animated Podhoretz most was the threat to the United States and to Israel posed by the Soviet Union, and by the left here and abroad generally. It was to combat this threat that he ghost-wrote Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s speech condemning the U.N.’s resolution labeling Zionism as racism. It was to combat this that Commentary under his leadership published hawks like Jeane Kirkpatrick. But he was not all politics. His undergraduate and postgraduate education in literature stuck with him. He loved classical music, especially when played on his state-of-the-art, immersive sound system. The eye could twinkle. He was devoted to his wife Midge Decter (d. 2022) and to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Commentary is now in the capable hands of his son John. Dead at 95. R.I.P.—though the next time you see lightning it may be Podhoretz dissecting something by Mailer.