• Fifty-seven percent of Minneapolis voters defeated a measure to end the police department, which is especially impressive considering that 43 percent of city residents are criminals.

• The House narrowly passed a bill to increase infrastructure spending by $550 billion, with 13 Republicans making up for a few left-wing nos. Republicans believe, accurately, that the spending bears only a passing relationship to the infrastructure improvements we need: It specifically bars any of the money from going to automate the ports, for example. Republicans also thought that passing the bill would aid the Democrats in passing their big “reconciliation” bill, which remains a work in regress. Its current version includes a slew of subsidies for renewable energy; increased Obamacare spending that will go in significant part to insurance companies; and an expansion of the tax break for state and local taxes that could hardly be designed better to benefit big Democratic donors. Progressives had a different analysis of the politics: Some negative votes came from Democrats who feared that with their infrastructure bill accomplished, Senators Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) would no longer have any need to cooperate on reconciliation. On this occasion, we hope the progressives are right.

• Goodbye, Julia. Hello, Linda. In 2012, the Obama campaign released a relentlessly mocked campaign document about a fictitious woman named “Julia,” the beneficiary of the cradle-to-grave welfare state envisioned by Obama and his Democratic allies. Julia – a cartoon whose facelessness emphasized both her interchangeability and her lack of personal autonomy – begins her life of semi-dependency in Head Start, and then proceeds to Pell grants, Obamacare, a job with a wage protected by the threat of litigation under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, “free” birth-control pills from her Uncle Sam, and so on, finally entering a dotage supported by Social Security and Medicare. The reaction to Julia was so intensely negative that the cartoon dependent was euthanized, which is how they do it in the serious welfare states. But she has now been reincarnated as Joe Biden’s avatar of helplessness, Linda. Linda is the beneficiary of every imaginable scheme attached to Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda. Linda works in a union manufacturing job in Illinois, and her young son is supported in part by monthly payments – not from his father, but from the IRS. Linda gets a day-care allowance, too, free college tuition, and – mirabile dictu! – a paying job as a college graduate: a unionized position maintaining government-subsidized wind turbines. And off goes Linda to her dotage and a government-funded hearing aid. Biden’s agenda is genuinely inspiring; what it inspires is despondency.

• When criticizing Biden’s proposed social-policy legislation, the “Build Back Better Act,” conservatives should feel like the mosquito in the nudist colony: There are so many targets that it doesn’t know where to begin. One place is the bill’s child-care provisions. These are separate from the universal-pre-K provisions and would create a new federal child-care program. The benefits are structured in a way that would discourage marriage and work. Subsidies would be awarded based on household income, but the combined incomes of unmarried couples wouldn’t count. That means a two-earner household of unmarried parents might qualify for subsidies while a two-earner household of married parents making the same amount of money did not. That two-earner married household would in many cases be more able to afford child care if one parent quit his or her job. The bill also pushes for much higher wages for child-care workers, which would send the unsubsidized cost of child care through the roof. Increasing demand and decreasing supply is becoming a theme of this administration.

• In early November, Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked President Biden about a Wall Street Journal report that the government was planning on paying up to $450,000 per person to illegal-immigrant families who were separated at the border under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance policy.” The payments, according to the Journal, would be made to settle lawsuits filed by more than 900 claimants, many represented by the ACLU, and could total over $1 billion. The president, however, didn’t seem to know anything about it, calling the report “garbage.” “$450,000 per person, is that what you’re saying?” Biden asked Doocy, incredulously. “That’s not going to happen.” Well, according to the ACLU, not so fast. The group’s executive director quickly released a statement refuting Biden, adding, “President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his own Justice Department.” The next day, the White House deputy press secretary fully walked back the president’s “garbage” declaration, saying that Biden would, in fact, be “completely comfortable” with settlement payments. The untutored Joe Biden can’t believe what his administration is doing; neither can we.

• Another shoe dropped in the Russiagate probe as special counsel John Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, the main source for the bogus “Steele dossier” that the FBI relied on, without verifying, to obtain national-security surveillance warrants from the secret federal FISA court. The false-statements charges against Danchenko follow the similar charge Durham brought against Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussmann in mid September. The prosecutor is plainly operating on a theory that “Trump–Russian collusion” was a political narrative conjured up by the Hillary Clinton campaign and then peddled to a complaisant press and credulous FBI agents who suspected the worst about Donald Trump and figured hard evidence would eventually catch up with their predisposition.

• The FDA’s approval of a COVID vaccine for children age five and up will bring comfort to a lot of parents. For most unvaccinated children, the risk of either getting or transmitting COVID is very low. The vaccine should lower that risk even more, and for the vast majority of children serious side effects from it appear to be even less common than severe cases of COVID. As for mandatory vaccination for children, it’s a fine idea – if, that is, you would like COVID policy to become even more contentious in return for small gains.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration finally made good on President Biden’s promise that it would mandate that companies with more than 100 employees require them to get vaccinated or take regular COVID tests. A federal appeals court immediately issued a temporary stay. The court cited “cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate.” The case is being briefed on an expedited schedule and is likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court before long. The Biden administration is trying to buy time, telling businesses they should still prepare to comply with the order. The administration has no one but itself to blame for its legal problems. Lacking authority to impose a national mandate on the American people, it is trying to do indirectly what it cannot do directly by means of having OSHA force it via employers. The president’s justification – that unvaccinated workers are a grave danger to vaccinated workers – is nonsensical. Telling businesses to keep preparing in advance makes it easier for challengers to argue that the case is ripe even though the mandate isn’t effective until January. And the administration will have to explain why it gets to short-circuit the usual formal rule-making process on grounds of emergency when it took two months to release a rule after it was announced, and will take two more before it is enforced.

• Even Andrew Cuomo is entitled to due process. That is in short supply thanks to ambitious Albany politicians. It is thus not clear that Cuomo has actually been charged with a misdemeanor, notwithstanding the fanfare with which Albany’s sheriff, Craig Apple, an elected Democrat, announced the charge. Apple is coordinating closely with another ambitious Democrat, state attorney general Letitia James, who is now running for governor – the job from which her explosive reports on sexual harassment and lethal mishandling of nursing-home patients drove Cuomo. But Apple is not coordinating with Albany district attorney P. David Soares, who, unlike James, would have to be able to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. It looks like this case continues to be about the abuse of power.

• Even blue-state voters aren’t buying the progressive line on voting rights. In New York, Proposal 3 would have instituted same-day voter registration, eliminating the state’s long-standing rule that voters must be registered at least ten days before the election. Same-day registration reduces states’ ability to keep the voter rolls accurate and ensure that voters are registered in the right place. Proposal 4 would have made no-excuses mail-in voting permanent beyond the pandemic, courting problems with ballot security, and was a particularly bad idea given New York’s proven incompetence in counting ballots in a timely fashion. The voters rejected both proposals by double-digit margins. By a similar margin, they also rejected Proposal 1, a complicated grab bag whose chief aim was to help Democrats more aggressively gerrymander New York’s state and federal legislative districts. It’s the Empire State, but Democrats need to be reminded it’s not the Democratic Empire State.

• New York mayor-elect Eric Adams is a big step up from Bill de Blasio. During the pandemic, as de Blasio’s embarrassing bid for president came to an end, the outgoing mayor oversaw a 44 percent increase in murders and a 12 percent decline in jobs – the worst employment hit of any U.S. city. Adams, a former cop and Brooklyn borough president, won the Democratic primary by rejecting far-left calls to defund the police and upend the city’s public-education system in the name of racial justice. Compared with de Blasio’s predecessors, Adams has an underwhelming résumé. He has no executive experience and few successes to speak of for his time as borough president. There are also ethical concerns around faulty tax filings and an apparent penchant for reckless driving, but New Yorkers can be forgiven for ignoring those for now. After all, he is not Bill de Blasio.

• Edward Durr is a great American story: Mr. Smith Goes to Trenton. When the New Jersey truck driver was denied a concealed-carry permit, he decided to run for office. Until a late infusion of $2,000, he spent just $153 in his primary campaign for a seat in the state senate, more than a third of it feeding his volunteers at Dunkin’ Donuts. On Election Day, he stunned the political world by defeating Democrat Stephen Sweeney, the longest-serving state-senate president in New Jersey history and, by some accounts, the most powerful man in the state. Durr was candid about his plans in office: “I really don’t know. . . . I don’t know what I don’t know. So, I will learn what I need to know.” The political press jeered at this, but it’s an honest answer. A few more ordinary citizens in government would be a good thing. Sweeney, who was once an ironworker but has been in office for over two decades, should have spent more time learning what his constituents wanted him to know.

• In a defeat for the defund-the-police movement, Minneapolis voters rejected a ballot measure that would have disbanded the city’s police department, replacing it with a new Department of Public Safety. The measure was supported by radicals such as Representative Ilhan Omar and state attorney general Keith Ellison, but 56 percent of Minneapolis voters opposed it, including Medaria Arradondo, the city’s popular black police chief, and other black community leaders worried about rising crime. At this point what a lot of Democrats would like to disband is the defund-the-police movement.

• NAACP president Derrick Johnson sent a letter to the players’ associations of major-league baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and women’s basketball, asking free-agent athletes to avoid signing with any of the nine pro-sports teams in Texas over the state’s recent laws changing voting procedures and restricting abortion. Texas forced through “archaic policies disguised as laws,” Johnson opined, which threaten “a woman’s freedom to choose, restrict access to free and fair elections for Black and brown voters, and increase the risk of contracting coronavirus.” Moreover, “Texas is not safe for you, your spouse, or your children.” In fact, “until the legislation is overturned, Texas isn’t safe for anyone.” At least it seems to be safe for hyperbole.

• Schadenfreude is a vice, but sometimes misfortune is just too richly deserved not to indulge in it. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred stripped the Atlanta Braves of the opportunity to host the league’s All-Star festivities earlier this year after Georgia Republicans enacted largely defensible changes to voting laws. That did nothing, however, to stop Biden from calling the legislation “Jim Crow on steroids,” or Manfred from bowing to the pressure built up by the president’s overheated rhetoric. The commissioner’s cowardice made it all the more enjoyable to watch Manfred have to congratulate the Braves on their surprising World Series win over the Houston Astros, who have their own recent history of villainy to pay for.

• By the time the climate-change conference in Glasgow had moved into its second week, it was following a fairly predictable course. This included disappointing teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who attacked it as, among other insults, a “Global North greenwash festival.” It was rather more than that. The conference had, by that point, seen agreements of varying coalitions of the willing against deforestation, coal, and methane, but these could, perhaps, be seen merely as further steps along an existing path. More interesting was the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a pact between some 450 financial institutions, with assets, supposedly, of $130 trillion between them, to boost investment in “clean energy and other sustainable infrastructure.” Some $100 trillion, it was claimed, would be required, and most of that would have to come from the private sector. Some climate warriors have criticized GFANZ as too nebulous an arrangement, but they should appreciate the principle it stands for: delivering some of their agenda without the bother of consulting the voters. And they should also be pleased that the other, easier-to-deliver side of GFANZ will undoubtedly involve slowly starving the fossil-fuel sector of capital. Those who have to heat their homes (or who insist on driving vehicles that rely on internal combustion) may take a different view.

• Under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. State Department is back in the business of exporting abortion. State’s 2020 annual human-rights report has been reissued with “reproductive rights” addenda. Hillary Clinton added the section when she was secretary of state, and Antony Blinken explained its reintroduction as necessary “because women’s rights – including sexual and reproductive rights – are human rights.” Killing unborn children is properly considered an attack on human rights, and our government’s cheerleading for it is a moral stain that undermines every true thing we have to say about human dignity.

• Blinken also called on “all U.N. member states to join us in supporting Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation throughout the U.N. system and in the international community,” as Beijing prepared to celebrate its 50th year as a member of the organization. Beijing has of course been tireless in seeking to block any recognition or participation for Taiwan in the United Nations. Since the election of Tsai Ing-wen as president of Taiwan, its citizens have been blocked from even setting foot on U.N. premises. It should go without saying that Taiwan deserves more respect than communist China – and, for that matter, more than the U.N.

• Perhaps in a desire for a fig leaf, dictators go through the motions of an election. Saddam Hussein did – getting 100 percent of the vote with 100 percent turnout. Vladimir Putin does. Egypt’s General Sisi does: In 2018, his nominal opponent actually endorsed him. And so does Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. This time around, he took care to imprison his opponents, including Félix Maradiaga and Arturo Cruz Jr. The secretary general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, said that Ortega had created “the worst possible circumstances for an electoral process.” The European Union said that the election had completed “the conversion of Nicaragua into an autocratic regime.” President Biden denounced a “pantomime election” and called for the release of political prisoners. The rulers of Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela, naturally, backed their fellow dictatorship. The United States is talking sanctions and other measures against the Ortega regime, and the sooner the better.

• Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist, is near death after going on a hunger strike to protest her incarceration. Zhang was detained and jailed after reporting on the Chinese government’s horrific treatment of Wuhan residents as COVID broke out in early 2020. According to Amnesty International, Zhang disappeared in May 2020. She began her hunger strike in June 2020 and has been subjected to force-feeding, feeding tubes, shackles, and other tortures. She appeared in a wheelchair at her sham trial in December 2020. Her family has had very little contact with her, and her brother believes she will not last through this upcoming winter. Zhang is one of a number of brave citizen journalists whom the Chinese government has jailed, and her plight deserves international outcry and attention.

• Kathleen Stock, philosopher and outspoken critic of transgender ideology, resigned from her role at the University of Sussex, in England, after being bullied by transgender activists on campus. Walls in and around the college were plastered with posters accusing Stock of “transphobia”; students marched to demand her firing. A website dedicated to her removal was set up, on which Stock was labeled a “spiteful bootlicker” and viewers were urged to “get angry.” Until Stock was fired, the anonymous authors wrote, “you’ll be seeing us around.” After Stock put in her resignation notice, the university’s vice chancellor wrote a regretful letter, reaffirming a commitment to freedom of speech and reminding students that everyone is supposed to be “free from bullying and harassment of any kind, which has not been the case for Professor Stock.”

• The American Medical Association published “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts” – a near-50-page guide for physicians. The document begins with the now-typical paean to The Science, advising that “the evidence – the science – shows that even despite great intentions, some decisions made at the practice and institution level, and by individuals themselves, are not meeting our intended desired impact to ensure the full potential for optimal health for our patients.” How does it propose to close this gap? By changing the English language. The AMA wants to be clear: Its goal is not to provide “a definitive list of ‘correct’ terms”; it merely wants to give guidance on “equity-focused, person-first language.” All right, let’s take a look: Instead of, say, “marginalized communities,” the AMA recommends “groups that have been historically marginalized or made vulnerable; historically marginalized.” Other words – such as “Caucasian,” “equality,” “vulnerable,” “white paper,” and “blackmail” – have got to go, too. The list comes with a glossary that defines such terms as “class consciousness” (“the recognition by workers of their unity as a social class in opposition to capitalists and to capitalism itself”). Could we get a second opinion?

• A new study from the American Enterprise Institute finds that one in five job postings at U.S. universities requires a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement from applicants. A typical prompt asks prospective hires whether they have “been involved in activities to advance or promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment or institution.” Ideological litmus tests of this sort are not limited to the woke social sciences and humanities: DEI statements are as common in engineering departments as in history departments. And they can play a decisive role in hiring decisions. At the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, three-quarters of applicants to a life-sciences post were eliminated based on their DEI statement alone. It may take a few extra decades to find a cure for cancer, but rest assured that it will be discovered by a researcher committed to advancing and promoting equity and inclusion.

• Raúl Rivero Castañeda was a darling of the communist regime in Cuba. Indeed, he was known as “the Poet of the Revolution.” He served as head of the writers-and-artists union. He was the top Cuban press representative in Moscow. He was, in short, the perfect writer, from the regime’s point of view. But, like many before him, he changed his mind, becoming a democrat and a thorn in the side of the regime. During the 2003 “Black Spring,” he was imprisoned and kept in isolation. After about a year, he was released and then exiled to Spain. Raúl Rivero showed great courage, giving hope to his fellow Cubans, making them feel less alone. Born in 1945, he has died at 75. R.I.P., and viva Cuba libre.

• “He kept us out of space,” Mort Sahl said, pretending to reach for one good thing to say about Eisenhower. The complacency and conformity that the pioneering stand-up comic saw in post-war America were his main material when he shot to celebrityhood overnight in the late 1950s. He hosted the Oscars and the Grammys in 1959 and landed on the cover of Time in 1960. He wrote jokes for the Kennedy campaign. JFK moved into the Oval Office; Sahl continued to tease and throw barbs at the president. Liberals were dismayed. Sahl, it turned out, was a staunch contrarian. After the JFK assassination, his obsession with it soured his work, and his career faded. He kept going. He retired from stand-up only last year, a dozen albums to his credit, and countless TV appearances over the decades. Delivering social and political commentary in a conversational style with understated comedic bite, he defied the Borscht Belt conventions that prevailed when he and Lenny Bruce were young and hungry in San Francisco. He raised the standards of his art. Dead at 94. R.I.P.

• In a brief memorial about his friend the author Walker Percy, Ben C. Toledano wrote in NR’s pages that Percy was a “dauntless diagnostician of illnesses of the soul.” Toledano, who died November 6 at age 89, was equally dauntless – but went further, by acting on those diagnoses. A lawyer who for decades wrote occasionally and sometimes acerbically in NR and other publications, he began in the late 1950s to revivify a Louisiana Republican Party that had lain mostly dormant for 80 years. He ran for office thrice, most notably for mayor of New Orleans in 1970, less in serious expectation of winning than in the hope, somewhat successful, of rebuilding the party’s viability. Yet Toledano was so much more than an occasional pol. A man of letters, he counted among his dear friends not just Percy but Russell Kirk. An art aficionado who himself was quite skilled with the brush, a collector of rare books, and a noted restorationist of historic architecture, Toledano was a man of moment and a friend to NR since its founding. R.I.P.

• His typical email bore one word: “Lunch?” It was good that such came frequently, because the company of Gerald Joseph Russello meant laughter, bonhomie, and discussion of things conservative and principles eternal. The cheerful New York securities lawyer and Catholic intellectual was a convener of men and ideas, and was passionate about the latter. How he found time to write and edit books (including The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk and two he compiled about Christopher Dawson), as well as articles for numerous publications including National Review, never mind his brilliant editing and orchestrating of The University Bookman, remains a mystery. Earlier this year he was sucker-punched by cancer. Gerald got up, fought with exceptional dignity, and kept working and writing and praying through grueling treatment. The initial hope of a few more years with his beloved wife Lexi and their three children was dashed – the cancer proved particularly aggressive. It took a beautiful man, who leaves a beautiful family, and many, many a friend. Requiescat in pace.

Youngkin’s Big Win

Glenn Youngkin unlocked the secret to electoral success in a Virginia that hadn’t elected a Republican statewide in twelve years and didn’t seem likely to do so again, given the state’s blue turn in the Trump years.

What Youngkin needed to do was obvious if not necessarily easy — unite Trump and anti-Trump voters and maintain big Republican margins in rural areas while eroding Democratic margins in the suburbs. He succeeded brilliantly.

There’s a danger in overinterpreting one election outcome when there was clearly an anti-Democratic wave around the country, in evidence from New Jersey, where the Republican Jack Ciattarelli nearly upset Democratic governor Phil Murphy, to Pennsylvania, where Republicans swept judicial races, to Long Island, where the GOP stormed back to power.

But the Virginia gubernatorial race was a national focus for months, and there are clearly lessons in how Youngkin prevailed in a state that Biden carried by ten points.

Youngkin welded together his coalition by avoiding criticisms of Trump while maintaining an arm’s length from him personally, taking care to brand himself as a relatable and inoffensive suburban dad, and — importantly — emphasizing the cultural issues around education that resonated with and motivated both pools of voters.

Youngkin rightly and unapologetically hit “critical race theory,” the rubric for racialist indoctrination and 1619 Project–style critiques of America, hard. But his message on education was much broader. He defended high standards and advanced learning, inveighed against school closures, talked about the need for greater school safety, and pushed back against explicit content in education, all the while advocating higher pay for teachers.

This suite of issues found a powerful common theme when Terry McAuliffe said in a debate that parents shouldn’t be involved in what schools teach to their kids. Given the moral high ground on parental involvement, Youngkin pounded the advantage home, as McAuliffe — partaking of his party’s high-handedness on the issue — didn’t realize his mistake until too late.

He also focused on pocketbook economic issues, while the mood music of his campaign, literally from beginning to end, was upbeat and unifying.

Incredibly enough, Youngkin improved on Trump’s margins in rural areas, and the exit polls showed him besting Trump among white women without a college education. On top of this, he made gains in all geographic areas of the state. The result suggests that the party’s grip on rural areas and small towns may be enduring even without Trump on the ballot, whereas the scale of the losses in the suburbs was a reaction to Trump himself.

Virginians voted in massive numbers, showing yet again that the conventional wisdom that high turnout hurts the GOP is false.

The Democratic reaction to the stinging loss has been to deny that CRT is taught in schools and denounce Youngkin for allegedly engaging in racist dog whistles (in the final days of the campaign, the anti-Republican Lincoln Project staged a witless stunt, sending tiki-torch-bearing faux white nationalists to stand outside Youngkin’s campaign bus). It is certainly true that the finer points of the theories around CRT aren’t taught in K–12 schools, but the broad attitude is obviously highly influential among educators and has seeped into training and curricula. Pushing back isn’t racist but constitutes a defense of how and what kids should be taught that was broadly acceptable the day before yesterday.

Youngkin’s win signals a bleak midterm election cycle ahead for Democrats. More important, it points toward a winning path for the GOP in the years ahead, if it can take it.

Editor’s Note: The next issue of National Review will appear in three weeks.