Plus: Israel votes and Bibi defies the polls once again.
• Lately the president seems obsessed with making Republicans a rump party.
• In Alaska, two-term Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan faces Democratic former Representative Mary Peltola. Alaska’s unique quasi-jungle primary election system sends the top four finishers from the primaries to a single general election, and another candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan made it to the ballot. He’s ostensibly a Republican but has no apparent reason to run except to drain the votes of confused voters away from the incumbent. This is a dirty tactic, and Republicans are right to cry foul. But the Justice Department has gone one step further, filing a federal lawsuit demanding “an order declaring a certification of an election result prejudiced by Daniel J. Sullivan’s inclusion on the ballot unlawful and enjoining defendants from allowing such a certification to occur.” The lawsuit, though not the effort to steal an election that Democrats have predictably labeled it, is meritless. It is patently premature for a court to issue an order before an election about the certification of results that haven’t been tallied yet. Moreover, the suit doesn’t mention any federal law that has been violated. The Sullivan scam is politics at its worst, but it is not against the law.
• Barring a miracle, the GOP is going to lose control of the House, and its Senate majority rests on a knife’s edge. This is alarming. Democrats did not moderate after their humbling loss to Trump in 2024. Instead, they became more radical than ever. They haven’t given an inch on trans issues or identity politics, and they show little sign of having learned from Joe Biden’s immigration debacle. Medicare for All is back in fashion, and the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America has made the party increasingly hostile to Israel. If Democrats take the House, they will raise federal spending while trying to defund the Iran war and interior immigration enforcement. If they gain unified control of Washington in 2028, they will attempt to pack the Supreme Court, dismantle the Electoral College, and grant statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. In short, they seek to make changes that would entrench them in power and poison our politics for years to come. The record of Republicans in Congress and in the states looks excellent in comparison. Congress has cut taxes and embraced deregulation. Many Republican governors, meanwhile, have pursued worthy reforms to housing and education. The best argument for voting Republican this election cycle is that the Democrats are much worse—a line that, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger, has the added advantage of being true.
• The radicalism of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Party’s nominee in the Michigan Senate race, is increasingly attracting attention. He and his allies insist that this scrutiny is driven by Islamophobia. Yet El-Sayed has built up a record of extreme views and associations. Although he claims to have no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, there is ample evidence that his mother and other family relations did. In 2012, meanwhile, he signed an open letter that endorsed “the revolutionary decisions taken by” Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader and then-president of Egypt. El-Sayed has held multiple rallies with Hasan Piker, one of the leading antisemitic podcasters in America, and has equated Israel with Hamas. His campaign waves off questions about these matters, and El-Sayed often portrays himself as a committed defender of the Constitution. But he has called for packing the Supreme Court and scrapping the Second Amendment. At a rally in Michigan, Barack Obama also insinuated that these attacks are Islamophobic and similar to the criticism he once faced. “I’ve got a long-form birth certificate to prove it,” Obama said. “This stuff didn’t work on me—not in Michigan—it’s not going to work on Abdul.” What may work: the Democrats’ campaign to present any questioning of their candidate’s radicalism as an attack on his religion.
• The AI company Anthropic, which develops the Claude model, filed to go public in what will likely be the largest IPO in history. SpaceX set the record earlier this year, and competitor OpenAI is preparing its own explosive public offering. Investors are cheering, as they will soon have the chance to buy into the fastest-growing sector of the global economy—no federal equity stake required. Yet caution may be warranted. Stock market gains are already concentrated in tech firms linked to AI investment, and a flood of Anthropic shares will tilt the balance further. If this is a bubble, it might burst if companies cannot build the data centers they need to grow, or if politicians try to shut down AI out of hysteria. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei could help by not prophesying the end of the world.
• Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich advocated nationalizing SpaceX and its Starlink satellite internet network after service to Ukraine was throttled, apparently at the request of CEO Elon Musk. Reich is right to worry about the influence of one civilian over grave matters of war and peace, and about Musk’s sometimes terrible judgment in exercising that influence. But nationalization risks turning Musk’s dynamic company and satellite constellation into a sclerotic utility. A better answer to the Ukraine debacle would encourage competition in space, giving America’s partners more private-sector options and leverage when they shop for the internet.
• The Trump Justice Department’s lawfare against former FBI director James Comey has hit new depths. A first incoherent false-statements indictment was dismissed because the prosecutor Trump selected was disqualified. A North Carolina federal judge is mulling motions to dismiss allegations that Comey—by posting a photo of seashells arrayed to say “86 47”—was threatening to murder the president. While he considers that case, prosecutors in Washington are on to strike three: trying to charge Comey with Espionage Act offenses based on an FBI leak, over a decade ago, regarding surveillance of a terrorist organization. We say “trying” because the allegations do not just have weak evidence to back them, but are past the statute of limitations. The day the statute kicked in, Justice filed a purported criminal “information”—a formal allegation filed by a prosecutor without court approval. But as any federal prosecutor knows, the Constitution requires a grand jury to approve an indictment before he can bring federal felony charges (unless the accused waives that right, which Comey has not done). It looks like prosecutors were clumsily trying to orchestrate a humiliating arrest: They temporarily obtained a gag order preventing the defense from commenting on the charges and simultaneously refused to discuss allowing Comey to surrender voluntarily in court. His lawyers sought emergency intervention from a judge, who has suspended proceedings while considering Comey’s motion to dismiss. Comey will survive the harassment; whether the DOJ’s reputation will is another story.
• This Election Day, California voters will vote on Proposition 40. Advertised by proponents as the “billionaire tax,” it would impose a 5 percent tax on California residents with assets of more than $1 billion. Proponents of the tax claim that it will raise $100 billion from just over 200 taxpayers. Yet Joshua Rauh and Benjamin Jaros, economists at the Hoover Institution, estimate that the tax will raise only $30 billion. Worse still, the erosion of California’s wealthy income-tax base would end up costing the state a net $38.9 billion in present-value revenue. How does a $100 billion wealth tax turn into a money loser? It turns out that billionaires will not stand idly by while their assets are confiscated. Seven fled the state after the ballot initiative was filed last year, taking with them $536 billion in wealth. Several more may have left the state quietly. California offers other greedy governments a cautionary tale. Once known as the land where anyone could strike it rich, the state is now shooing those who did out the door.
• Benjamin Netanyahu managed to defy the polls once again. When the dust settled in the Israeli elections, both his Likud party and his broader right-wing coalition were left with the largest numbers. But neither he nor his chief opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, will have a sufficient number of votes to give them a clear path to forming a majority government. In theory, Eisenkot and Netanyahu could form a unity government. Or, he could form an alliance with the Arab parties, which gained a significant number of seats on the backs of strong turnout (which Netanyahu said was the result of voter fraud). But Eisenkot pledged during the campaign that he wouldn’t partner with Netanyahu or an Arab party. When it comes to matters of war and peace — ending Hamas rule in Gaza and countering Hezbollah and Iran — there is a lot of overlap between Netanyahu and Eisenkot. But two issues will be hard to finesse. One is Eisenkot’s insistence on an independent inquiry, which Bibi opposes, into the security failures that led to October 7. Another is his support for ending various exemptions that have allowed ultra-Orthodox communities, Bibi’s political allies, to avoid military service. So unless campaign pledges are thrown aside to strike a deal, Israel will head to another election in a few months and Netanyahu will be prime minister in the meantime.
• These things are relative, but France saw less rioting last weekend than the country has been getting used to. “Only” around 50 police officers were injured and “only” some 1,500 people were arrested. France’s interior minister, however, still talked about “an extremely high level of violence.” On Friday, one person was killed, and several (including a twelve-year-old girl) were injured in a shooting rampage in Trappes, near Paris, which apparently targeted migrants. President Emmanuel Macron described this as a “turning point” in the unrest because it was supposedly the first terrorist attack in France in which the victims were selected on the basis of the color of their skin or their religion. This will come as a surprise to those who, to take two of many examples, remember Father Jacques Hamel, who was butchered in his church in 2016, or the victims of a murderous attack at a Jewish school in 2012. Even more talk of a clampdown on social media, as well as a pledge to introduce educational reforms and spend $4 billion on new schools, will make little difference to the fate of a deeply dysfunctional state on the edge of a fiscal crisis.
• The Kehlsteinhaus, a chalet-style building often referred to as the Eagle’s Nest, was given to Hitler as a birthday gift. Perched high on a Bavarian mountain, it survived the war and souvenir-hunting G.I.s. But a psychiatrically disturbed arsonist took matters into his own hands last week and burned the building to the ground. The Bavarian government is currently set on rebuilding. The chalet was little used by Hitler—who apparently didn’t trust the lavish, state-of-the-art elevator and was not fond of heights—other than for diplomatic receptions. But with its spectacular views, the Kehlsteinhaus was popular with some of those in the Third Reich’s inner circle, including Eva Braun. Her sister held her wedding reception there (the groom was shot the next year; no loss). More recently, the property has been primarily used as a restaurant. If the building is reconstructed, we would conserve anything of genuine historical interest that has not been destroyed, but that would be it. The rest should be distinct, related to the new Germany rather than the old.
• President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Brazilian Workers’ Party won a fourth term in office after a comeback victory over his challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who himself lost to Lula in 2022. Lula’s win ends a recent streak of victories for right-wing parties across Latin America, and he has promised to continue leading Brazil in opposition to Trump’s ambitions for the Western Hemisphere. Like his father before him, Flávio has claimed that his loss to Lula was the result of dirty tricks. In 2023, a mob of supporters stormed federal buildings in support of Jair’s claims, and he was later convicted of an attempted coup d’état and jailed. (As recently as 2019, Lula was also in prison.) On Wednesday, Flávio fled into exile to the United States in order to avoid an expected prosecution. Brazil is a big—and rising—country. It would be good for America for it to be well-governed, but there does not currently seem to be much hope for that.
• Major League Baseball is trying to get more scoring in the game by restricting how fielders play defense. As with recent changes to MLB rules, the problem is real, but the solution ignores its cause. In the 19th century, baseball put many restrictions on where fielders could play and how pitchers could deliver the ball. Over time, the rules let teams and players use more strategy and focused on limiting external constraints such as the strike zone, the fences, the mound, the bases, and the bats. But more recent rule changes have interfered with strategic choices. In 2023, baseball limited how infielders can shift to where a batter tends to hit the ball. The new proposals would do something similar to outfielders by anchoring them in fixed positions. The MLB hopes that thwarting the science of positioning will produce more exciting doubles and triples. But the real issue is strikeouts: Baseball has gone from 4.7 strikeouts per 9 innings in 1981 to 5.8 in 1993, 6.8 in 2008, 8.1 in 2016, and between 8.5 and 9.1 every year since 2018. With fewer hits, batters swing more for the longball. It matters little how the fielders do their jobs when so few balls are put in play in the first place.
• J.K. Rowling has doubled down on her opposition to transgender activism. In an update to an explosive essay published in 2020, Rowling argues that gender ideology has taken hold of cultural and political institutions, leaving groups such as working-class women, rape survivors, schoolgirls, and incarcerated women to bear immense costs. Contemporary trans activism, she says, is “elitist to its core.” Critics have ferociously attacked Rowling, and she has even faced death threats. Her objection, she argues, is to policies that require women to surrender protections grounded in biology. No wizard’s tricks can change the realities of sex.