On the menu today: Why you should take the “Casey DeSantis for governor” buzz seriously; why Joe Biden isn’t coming back to the political spotlight even if NBC reports otherwise; and why the Trump administration isn’t going far enough in its campaign of retribution against America’s colleges and universities.
Casey, Likely Coming Up to Bat
You may have seen the coverage of my Friday morning interview with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Casey DeSantis at the National Review Ideas Summit.
I don’t know if Casey DeSantis will run for governor of Florida in 2026. But consider a handful of facts:
- The governor could have come to the NR Ideas Summit alone; the DeSantises came together and did a joint interview.
- We don’t tell our guests the interview questions ahead of time, but we do discuss the topics likely to come up, and the DeSantis team was just fine with a question about the buzz around her running for governor. In fact, I think they wanted that question asked.
- DeSantis offered a long answer (you can watch it starting about here) that emphasized that as much as she was proud of her husband’s record, they could be undone, reversed, or squandered by the wrong successor . . . and ended with, “We’ll see, right?”
- Ron DeSantis told the story of how the late Rush Limbaugh said Casey should be the one running for governor.
People who have no interest in running for governor usually say, “No, I’m not running for governor.” So, it seems reasonable to surmise that there is at least some genuine interest on her part.
Now, if you’re skeptical of any wife of a successful politician running for office when he’s term limited, I get it. If Casey DeSantis runs, she will have to earn the GOP nomination, and the office. President Trump has already endorsed Representative Byron Donalds.
But keep in mind, Casey DeSantis is awfully darn sharp and knows Florida’s state policies quite well. Based upon my limited interaction with her, I suspect her retail politics skills are as good as they come. Throw in high name recognition, and the fundraising machine that propelled Ron DeSantis in 2018 (more than $58 million) and 2022 (more than $177 million), and you’re looking at a potential gubernatorial candidate who would be, at minimum, formidable.
No, Biden’s Not Getting Back In
I don’t mean to pooh-pooh the reporting of the folks over at NBC News, but Friday they published a widely discussed story that I think is 99 percent nonsense:
Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.
Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.
The NBC headline was, “The Bidens Want Back In.” Jill Biden may want back in, but the rest of the Democratic Party doesn’t have much interest in letting them back in. And Joe Biden’s been so hidden from public view since leaving office, it’s hard to buy that he’s just itching to step back into the spotlight.
Last week I wrote that that Joe Biden hadn’t made any in-person speaking appearances since Inauguration Day. A reader wrote in with something of a technical correction: On March 15, the former president did give remarks at the conference of the National High School Model United Nations. The sum total coverage of those remarks was one post on Facebook.
Biden’s speech wasn’t covered by anyone because the Biden team didn’t want it covered by anyone, and when the staff makes a decision like that, it’s a sign they have no idea how the old guy is going to perform. Which means Biden is no more coherent, energetic, or compelling than he was in the closing weeks of his presidency.
NBC News also reported, “He has been splitting his time between Delaware and Washington for meetings in office space supplied by the federal government. As was his habit as a U.S. senator, he often commutes via Amtrak.”
A Morning Jolt reader wrote in last week, saying she saw Biden and his Secret Service protection detail traveling on Amtrak from New York City to Wilmington. “His phalanx of Secret Service kept everyone away from him but as far as I could tell, he made no effort to engage anyone around him and I didn’t hear him talking at all. At his stop, he stiffly doddered off the train without turning around to wave or anything and (to my surprise considering the route) there was no spontaneous burst of applause or whatever when he got up to leave even though everyone in the car knew he was there (except for one woman who yelled out, ‘We miss you!’).”
This is a very quiet retirement for the former president.
University Presidents Are Surrendering to the Trump Agenda
I hope liberal donors to big universities read this article in the Wall Street Journal:
When University of Michigan President Santa Ono sat down for breakfast earlier this month with a group of lawmakers from his home state, the message was clear: The school was ready to play ball with Trump’s Washington.
It was time for universities to “wake up” and start addressing the reasons why they have lost so much trust, Ono told the bipartisan group in a hotel conference room near the Capitol, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. Ono added that universities should listen to their most “vocal critics.” . . .
Columbia University, which came under scrutiny for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests last year, gave in on Friday to a far-reaching list of Trump’s demands after he revoked $400 million in federal funding. Other schools closely watched the days of tense negotiations. Behind the scenes, Columbia officials have had a presence in D.C. in recent weeks, too, often asking lawmakers how to restore confidence in the university, according to people familiar with the meetings.
A week ago, J. Oliver Conroy wrote in The Guardian, “US universities face choice to surrender or fight back against Trump’s ‘takeover.’” Looks like they chose surrender!
All that talk about “resistance,” all that blather about being the last defenders of democracy, and the guys running these universities folded like a cheap suitcase the moment their grant money was threatened.
All those generous donations to the endowments of those top-level schools feel like money well spent right now, huh, progressives?
Go figure, a bunch of university presidents who couldn’t stand up to students who were cheerleaders for Hamas and who were chanting “from the river to the sea” without knowing which river and which sea also can’t and won’t stand up to the Trump administration when their federal funding is threatened. These guys have the backbone of an amoeba.
Academics, you earned your way into this mess. You deserve what you’re getting right now.
Honestly, the problem with the Trump administration is that it’s giving Columbia University the $400 million back in exchange for just a handful of basic concessions, like “adopt a formal definition of antisemitism” and “hire an internal security force that will be empowered to make arrests.” That’s a really low bar to clear.
Between 1976 and 2018, full-time administrators and other professionals employed by those institutions increased by 164 percent and 452 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the number of full-time faculty employed at colleges and universities in the U.S. increased by only 92 percent, marginally outpacing student enrollment which grew by 78 percent.
Set a maximum administrator-to-student ratio and enforce it.
It’s also time to require schools getting federal aid to cut tuition rates, never mind merely minimizing the rate of increase. Purdue University in Indiana has kept tuition flat for twelve years now — $9,992 per year. If they can do it, everyone else can do it.
We should slash all the generous programs that allow universities and schools to charge all of these absurdly overinflated tuition rates.
And it’s time to stop giving 290,000 slots in U.S. universities to Chinese students, so we can stop devoting American resources to educating young people who are, in many cases, the offspring of powerful figures in a regime that hates us. For a long time, the argument was welcoming the offspring of foreign leaders would build better and closer relations between the countries. America’s best schools welcomed a whole bunch of kids and grandkids of top Chinese government officials:
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s only daughter, Xi Mingze, was educated at Harvard. Two of the party’s last three top leaders, former President Zhao Ziyang and Jiang Zemin, had grandchildren who attended Harvard. Jia Qinglin, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s highest ruling organ, had a granddaughter at Stanford. The now disgraced former Chongqing party star Bo Xilai, is the father of Bo Guagua, who had attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
How’s that working out for us? Getting a warm and fuzzy vibe from Xi Jinping’s regime, from all that terrific educational interchange?
How about, at minimum, no more children of Chinese state officials get to come to American universities until Chinese state-run media stops bellowing out anti-American propaganda?
ADDENDUM: If you were there at the NR Ideas Summit, it was great to see you! If you weren’t, boy, did you miss a good time. You can get a taste of the experience by watching it on video here and here, but that doesn’t capture the off-stage conversations that attendees got to experience!