Dear Weekend Jolter,
If you’ve been checking in on other corners of the media universe lately, you might get the impression that the Supreme Court and Donald Trump are in Phase Three of a sinister cabal hatched on Clarence Thomas’s yacht off the coast of Monaco.
If you’ve been reading National Review (which, if you are reading this, you have been), you already know that, contra Chris Hayes, the plot is not, in fact, on, and the Court has been managing the varied and often-novel cases concerning the former president in sober fashion. Andy McCarthy, Dan McLaughlin, and our other in-house legal experts make sure that’s clear. On Trump’s legal woes and virtually any other major issue you can think of in the news, NR’s team of writers and contributors are unmatched in their commitment to telling it straight and getting it right — even when some of the coverage out there seems like it’s from another planet.
But we need your help: We rely, in considerable part, on contributions from our readers to keep doing this work, and so we are asking for your support. Amid a busy news cycle, we are running a webathon for the first time in a while, and hope you’ll consider donating. (This one is a little different from usual, which I’ll explain momentarily.)
First, the why. We know you’ve got many competing demands for your attention and support. In a hyperpolarized and not-always-reliable media environment, though, it’s important to have publications like this one that work to earn their readers’ trust. Rich Lowry put it well, as he often does, in his appeal:
While NR is a commercial enterprise, it is the cause that matters to us much more than the bottom line. For us, if there’s a conflict between speaking the truth and worrying about the bottom line, it isn’t even a question — it’s the truth every single time.
Indeed, National Review is a rare creature in our media landscape, an independent-minded voice of ordered liberty that isn’t motivated by clicks or ratings.
Sure, we care about traffic, but we mostly rely on the support of our readers, through their subscriptions and donations, to maintain our independence and publish some of the best minds in the business, who keep the rest of the political firmament honest.
There’s Dominic Pino, who devotes every day to swatting down bad economic and policy arguments and calling out bad actors. There’s Caroline Downey, who devoted a big part of 2023 to interviewing “detransitioners” and telling their stories; her reporting last year revealed how impressionable teens and young adults were being rushed down the gender-transition path. Already this month, she’s reported on two major developments here: a Finnish study that undermines the narrative that these procedures prevent suicides, and newly released documents that reveal the private concerns members of a leading medical organization voiced about youth gender interventions.
On other issues ranging from campus antisemitism to immigration to President Biden’s myriad 2024 liabilities (and Trump’s), we are bringing to bear every day our best assets: thorough reporting, combined with clearheaded and honest analysis.
If you’re into this kind of thing, please, consider a contribution. As for how this webathon is a bit different from those past, we’re offering two ways to support our operation.
One is to give straight to National Review, Inc., a for-profit enterprise (that’s the aspiration, anyway) that produces what you read here online and in the magazine. These contributions are not tax deductible, but they are vital to us all the same. You can also give to National Review Institute, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalistic think tank created by William F. Buckley to support the NR mission; these gifts are tax deductible. Feel free to give any amount to one, or both — and we’ll work our tuchuses off to repay the favor with cogent, fearless, and honest writing about the crazy world we live in. Thank you, as always.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Swing voters, this speech was not for you: Biden Loudly Panders to the Progressive Base
On the end of the GOP primary race: Nikki Haley Overperformed, but There Was No Beating Trump
The filibuster is in danger: Kyrsten Sinema’s Exit and the Perilous Future of the Filibuster
On this week’s big Court ruling: Supreme Court Lets Voters Decide on Trump
ARTICLES
Brittany Bernstein: Biden’s Misleading State of the Union: Hamas Casualty Figures, Inflated Jobs Numbers, and Dobbs Distortions
Philip Klein: Biden Delivers the Most Anti-Israel Presidential Speech in History
Philip Klein: It Never Stopped Being Donald Trump’s Party
Jeffrey Blehar: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Rich Lowry: Joe Biden Will Never Be Normal Again
Rich Lowry: The Rise of Trump Nostalgia
Caroline Downey: Leading Trans Medical Org Members Privately Voiced Concerns about Risks of Child Transition, Documents Reveal
Audrey Fahlberg: Kari Lake Talks ‘Difficult’ Deficit Math
Jimmy Quinn: U.N. Report Finds ‘Reasonable Grounds’ to Conclude Rape Was Used on October 7
Abigail Anthony: RuPaul’s ‘All-Inclusive,’ Anti-Censorship Book Store Immediately Removes Right-Wing Titles
Noah Rothman: This May Be the Dumbest Thing John Kerry Has Ever Said
Zach Kessel: As Campus Antisemitism Reared Its Ugly Head, Conservatives Woke Up. What Comes Next?
Madeleine Kearns: Alabama’s IVF Dilemma
Dan McLaughlin: Haste and Acrimony Undermine a Unanimous Supreme Court in Trump-Eligibility Case
Danielle Pletka: Don’t Fall for Hamas’s Numbers Game
Jay Nordlinger: What McConnell Has Meant
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White, with something uplifting: A Cartoon Stands Athwart AI
Brian Allen reports from Paris, where he found a smart alternative to waiting in the daunting Louvre pyramid line: Tackling the Fashion of Sports in Paris
CAPITAL MATTERS
Dominic Pino explains the disconnect between United Auto Workers’ name and what it actually does: The United Non-Auto Non-Workers
THE EXCERPTS ARE FREE, EVEN WHEN WE’RE ASKING FOR MONEY
What’s the takeaway from the 2024 Republican primary, now that Trump is about to claim the nomination, again? Phil Klein hits it:
Now that we have made it to this point — which has seemed increasingly inevitable for months — we can view the past four years with a bit more perspective. And what has become clear is that at no point did the Republican Party stop being the party of Trump. Not after he lost to Biden. Not after January 6. Not after his hand-picked candidates lost in 2022.
It is now taken as obvious that the sympathy for Trump stemming from multiple indictments put the nomination out of reach for anybody else. But the fact that the reflex among Republican voters was to rally behind him suggests that they never truly left him in the first place. . . .
Trump won nearly three-quarters of the vote in North Carolina, and the exit polls underscore the extent to which there aren’t many pockets of resistance to Trump’s nomination among Republicans. He dominated every age group and beat Haley among military veterans and those who had never served. More than twice as many voters there said Trump was more physically and mentally fit to serve as president than the much younger Haley, and 65 percent said Trump would still be “fit” if convicted of a crime.
Of the additional states that have been called as of this writing, Trump is winning Massachusetts by about 25 points; Colorado by about 30 points; Maine by about 45 points; Arkansas and Minnesota by over 50 points; Texas and Tennessee by about 60 points; Oklahoma by 65 points; and Alabama by over 70 points.
In his race for the Republican nomination, Trump did not debate, and he barely campaigned. He didn’t elaborate on his policy proposals. Ron DeSantis tried to run against him from the right, Chris Christie from the left, and Nikki Haley from the middle. None of it mattered. All that mattered was that most Republican voters were always with Trump.
Here’s more from Caroline Downey’s report mentioned above:
Members of WPATH, the leading global medical organization devoted to transgender health care, have admitted privately that youth gender interventions are largely experimental and that minors struggle to give informed consent before undergoing the procedures, according to newly released internal documents.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) advocates for minors to seek transition hormones and surgeries if they feel sure of their trans identity. Adolescents who have received a diagnosis of “gender incongruence” should have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries so long as they demonstrate “the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment,” WPATH recommends in its Standards of Care 8. . . .
While WPATH and the organizations that follow its lead unhesitatingly advocate for the medicalization of trans children, internal documents obtained by the nonprofit Environmental Progress reveal that WPATH members have acknowledged behind closed doors that young people often lack the health literacy and discernment to comprehend the gravity of the life-altering medical decisions they’re making and their possible ramifications, such as sterility, derailed sexual development, and general regret.
In an internal panel titled Identity Evolution Workshop held on May 6, 2022, WPATH member Dr. Daniel Metzger, a Canadian endocrinologist, explained the challenge of obtaining consent from youth “who haven’t even had biology in high school yet,” the documents show.
Many young people seeking medical interventions such as hormone therapy don’t understand that the injections cause irreversible physical changes that can’t be disaggregated, Metzger explained. Patients don’t always realize they can’t opt for a lower voice without facial hair, for example.
“It’s hard to kind of pick and choose the effects that you want,” Metzger said. “That’s something that kids wouldn’t normally understand because they haven’t had biology yet, but I think a lot of adults as well are hoping to be able to get X without getting Y, and that’s not always possible.”
Metzger said he has had to teach young people that their gender identity may not “be binary, but hormones are binary.” . . .
In a discussion thread dated March 24, 2022, a nurse practitioner mentioned in the chat a female “young patient” who after three years of testosterone developed pelvic inflammatory disease and vaginal atrophy, a typically post-menopausal phenomenon that makes intercourse painful and can also lead to distressing urinary symptoms. Another commenter in the chat said that males they knew had similar discomfort and suffering. A registered nurse reported male patients who described erections as “feeling like broken glass.”
NR’s editorial lays out why Sinema’s exit spells even more trouble for the future of the filibuster:
Beyond the immediate electoral implications, a longer-term consequence is that Sinema’s exit, following the announced retirement of Senator Joe Manchin and the decision of Senator Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader, means yet another defender of the filibuster is leaving the Senate.
The tradition of the filibuster does not explicitly appear in the Constitution, which left it up to the chambers of Congress to determine their rules. But in modern times, it is one of the few remaining ways of respecting the Founders’ vision of making sure really big changes are adopted only when there is overwhelming and geographically broad political support. Without it, relatively small left-wing majorities could come to power and very quickly transform the U.S. into a European welfare state.
While it makes sense that progressives would want to obliterate the filibuster for these reasons, the temptation is also there among populists who are eager to harness the power of the state for right-wing ends. Donald Trump himself advocated doing so when he was president, and he would likely have more support if reelected, with McConnell out of the picture. And if Biden gets reelected with a Democratic Senate, conservatives can no longer count on Manchin and Sinema to hold the line against efforts from the Left to do away with the filibuster. The prospect of the filibuster going away should be worrisome for all those who still care about limiting the expansion of the federal government.
Jimmy Quinn reports from the U.N. on findings that should begin to overpower the sustained denialism about the nature of the October 7 attacks:
A U.N. report released this afternoon found it “reasonable” to conclude that rape was used against Israelis during Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack. It also concluded that there’s “clear and convincing” information showing that sexual violence, including rape and “sexualized torture,” has been used and continues to be used against hostages held in Gaza.
The report, which will later be folded into a broader annual report by the U.N. secretary-general, effectively swats down some of the rampant denialism of Hamas atrocities, adding the U.N.’s imprimatur to the allegations of sexual violence that have been contested by skeptics.
Still, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz called the country’s U.N. ambassador back to Jerusalem for consultations, accusing the U.N. of trying to “silence” the document’s findings because officials did not call a Security Council meeting on it.
During a press conference today, U.N. special representative Pramila Patten laid out the findings, which are based on a 17-day trip that she and ten members of her team took to Israel and the West Bank in January and February. Patten is the U.N. secretary general’s envoy on sexual violence in conflict.
The Patten team conducted confidential interviews of 34 people including survivors and witnesses and reviewed more than 5,000 images and about 50 hours of video footage. Patten said her team believes material provided by Israeli authorities to have been “authentic and unmanipulated.”
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations,” the report states, naming the Nova music festival, Kibbutz Re’im, and Road 232 as those locations.
The Patten report also documented accounts from witnesses who spoke of “at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women.”
It referred to “credible sources,” who “described seeing multiple murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were found naked from the waist down, some totally naked, with some gunshots in the head and/or tied including with their hands bound behind their backs and tied to structures such as trees or poles.”
Closing out here with the final line of our editorial on Biden’s high-decibel SOTU:
President Biden is one of the few presidents whose age is more than twice his job-approval rating. This speech will not change that.
Shout-Outs
The Free Press: Navalny’s Letters from the Gulag
Alaina Demopoulos, at the Guardian: The job applicants shut out by AI: ‘The interviewer sounded like Siri’
Christopher Rufo, at City Journal: Giving DEI the Pink Slip
CODA
When asking for alms, it’s apt to set the mood with the blues. SRV’s “Tin Pan Alley” is one of the most soulful examples I can think of from (relatively) recent decades — enjoy that live version. And, once more, if you would like to contribute some coin to this enterprise and help us keep doing what we do in a time of media turmoil, we would greatly appreciate it.
Have a great weekend.
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